Remember the sufferings of the neglected rural woman

I was born and brought up in a rural area just like the vast majority of Tanzanians. At the moment the rural populace is projected to be over 37 million, meaning they are still the majority, now that there are about 58 million Tanzanians. In those years gone, as we grew up, going to the big city like Dar es Salaam, or even the nearest bigger ‘town’ by then like Tanga, was a dream for many.

Doors would open up for some after class seven, especially the boys who did not continue with secondary education and beyond, as they went out to look for a ‘better life’. For others, it would be happening much later in life.

For a good number of men, some used to work/do business in Dar es Salaam and other towns, and would come back home once in a while. For our mothers in the village, the vast majority just stayed in the village taking care of their families and working at their farms, mostly just for subsistence. Some of their daily errands often included fetching water in far away streams.

We had some women/mothers whose husbands after leaving for the big towns, for years and years, did not come back neither were they sending any money/help to their families. The typical life of the rural mother is one, where she works so hard most of her life, from taking care of the family, tilling, livestock keeping, and this does not earn her income.

The bitter truth, if it’s to be told, the neglected African rural woman, is more often than not, the custodian of the family.

The tales of rural women abandoned by their husbands and their struggles to bring up the children single-handedly, including making sure they get an education, are sad, yet inspiring. Those women experience poverty, sometimes very harsh poverty. Despite many odds, the rural mothers have always brought up incredible children, some who have made our nations proud.

Recently, during the International Day of Rural Woman (October 15), the day that recognizes “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty” UN Secretary-General António Guterres, wrote that “many rural women suffer from discrimination, systemic racism and structural poverty, despite playing a critical role in food security and nutrition.”

In the case of the African woman, structural poverty is one of her biggest enemies. Here I am talking about the weakness of our economies across the continent, which makes it hard, sometimes impossible for the general population, more so, women and youths to earn sufficient income.

Take the case of the chocolate industry which is said to be worth over $80 billion a year in West Africa.

The women of Ghana and Ivory Coast are said to be the ones doing most of the hard farm work! But what do they get in return? Media reports indicate that the farmers make less than a dollar a day, yet the chocolate made from their sweat sells like hot cake in Europe.

A BBC story quoting an African Development Bank notes that Ivory Coast women do 70 percent of the work in cacao farms but they only get about 20 percent of the income.

In such a scenario how do we expect rural women to advance economically considering that we are talking about a very significant number of the population in Africa? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Sub-Saharan Africa, women make up about 50 percent of the agricultural labour force.

Africa needs to urgently look holistically and act to end structural poverty which makes the lives of the rural women often to be full of difficulties, by empowering them as they are key agents for achieving the overall economic development.

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Saumu Jumanne lectures at the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE)