RECOGNISE WOMEN’S ROLE IN ENDING GLOBAL HUNGER

Although gender equality and women’s empowerment are gaining ground globally, there is still a need to support rural women as a means to end hunger and poverty.

We have more women leaders today than there were around a decade ago, and more girls go to school, but there is still a long way to go before women and girls can be said to fully enjoy their fundamental rights.

Women comprise about 37 percent of the world’s rural agricultural employment, and yet they are still at the bottom of every economic, social and political indicator—from income and education to health and participation in decision-making.

Despite rural women being a major part of the agricultural labour force performing most of the unpaid care work in rural areas, they continue to be held back in fulfilling their potential.

Investing in rural women is important in a nation’s development. Given the chance and equal access to productive resources, women can help wipe out hunger from the face of the world.

Discriminatory laws and practices affect not just women but entire communities and nations. Countries where women lack land ownership rights or access to credit have more malnourished children.

It is strange that even in those countries with the best records there is under-representation of women in political and business decision-making.

Training girls and women in rural areas is another requirement for empowering them. They need to be given vocational education in agriculture.

There is a good reason for this. The energy, talent and strength of women and girls represent humankind’s most valuable untapped natural resource.

Giving women inexpensive loans, teaching them scientific ways of farming and preserving food products, and creating a market where they can sell their products without the intervention of unscrupulous middlemen can improve the living standards of rural women.

PUT EMPHASIS ON SOLAR POWER

More and more people are being connected to electricity in Tanzania, thanks to the highly successful programme being undertaken by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), and renewed efforts by Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) to supply power in urban areas.

So far so good, but it should not be lost on anybody that there are millions of Tanzanians who still have no access to electricity. We cannot talk of marching in tune with the rest of world in this highly competitive era of science and technology when only a fraction of the population gets electricity.

There is plenty of sunlight in Tanzania, and this means that we can sustainably bank on solar power, and make it possible for pupils and students to study comfortably, families to watch TV, doctors to perform surgery in rural health centres, and everybody to charge their mobile phones.

As things stand now, making solar panels available at a cost that is affordable to the average Tanzanian is the surest way to speed up development in. In effect, that is what people empowerment is all about—literally.