by Amy J. Sullivan Introduction If as claimed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations women grow up to eighty percent of the food produced in Africa, then targeting them during research, technology development and dissemination makes sense. In order to do so, it is necessary to recognize that not all women farmers […]
by Robert P. Uttaro Abstract This paper examines two decisions farmers in southern Malawi make every planting season: whether or not to acquire increasingly expensive chemical fertilizers and whether or not to buy and plant equally expensive hybrid maize seed. Both choices are interrelated. Maize is the staple food crop in Malawi and the key […]
by Abe Goldman and Kathleen Heldenbrand Introduction This paper explores gender-related aspects of agriculture and agricultural change in a densely populated, high potential area in eastern Uganda, particularly in relation to declining productivity in the region. Much recent literature has investigated the impacts of specific agricultural policies and projects on women farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. […]
Read more "Gender and Soil Fertility Management in Mbale District, Southeastern Uganda"
by Peter Nkedi-Kizza, Jacob Aniku, Kafui Awuma, and Christina H. Gladwin Abstract The removal of subsidy under the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank has increased the cost of fertilizers and lowered the level of fertilizer input use among the small-scale farmers in Uganda and in many African countries. It is also reported that female […]
by Christina H. Gladwin Abstract Soil fertility is the number-one natural resource in Africa; yet its depletion on smallholder farms has led to stagnant or decreasing per capita food production all over Africa during the last two decades. Unexamined – except in this special edition – are the gender impacts of the soil fertility crisis […]
Read more "Gender and Soil Fertility in Africa: Introduction"
by Aili Mari Tripp Abstract Much of the literature on women and land tenure in Africa has viewed the introduction of land titling, registration, and the privatization of land under colonialism and after independence as a setback for women, leaving women in a state of even greater insecurity with poorer prospects for accessing land, and […]
Read more "Women’s Movements, Customary Law, and Land Rights in Africa: The Case of Uganda"
by Mary Johnson Osirim Abstract Since the early 1990’s, Zimbabwe has been enmeshed in a major economic crisis that has seriously eroded the status of women in that country. For the past three years, the economic crisis has been joined by a political crisis which marks the first major challenge to the Mugabe regime since […]
Read more "Crisis in the State and the Family: Violence Against Women in Zimbabwe"
by Melinda Adams Abstract Much of the literature on colonial policies towards women has highlighted the ways that these policies spread Western notions of domesticity and narrowed the space available for African women to participate in public life. Drawing from the case of British Southern Cameroons, this paper argues that colonial policies and encounters were […]
by Pamela Kea Abstract Drawing on ethnographic research with Senegalese female migrants in Brikama, The Gambia, this article examines local citizenship and agrarian clientelism. Emphasis is placed on female migrants because of the dearth of ethnographic literature on female migrants in West Africa and to highlight the centrality of female migrants to processes of incorporation, […]