Investment in Smallholders + Girls in School = Africa’s Success

A developed world knows just as well as the developing world that men have more opportunities than women. Some regions face more challenges than others. In Africa many factors hold girls back. In some places, it’s conflict; in others, it’s a lack of infrastructure. But the most important inhibitor is culture, with rural girls facing persistent inequalities stemming from long-held, deeply rooted traditions and cultural norms.

The odds notwithstanding, stories of success abound. I will share one such story of a young girl, not too unlike millions of others in Sub-Saharan Africa. She lived on a small farm in rural Uganda, displaced from her country of birth by political strife. From a tender age, she helped her parents work the land. Her first classroom was under a tree. She had neither books nor blackboard. All she had was the will to learn and the desire of her mother and father to give her a better life.
 

Whenever her parents made a little extra money—from a good crop or the sale of a cow—they would invest some of it in her education. She went from school to university and beyond. She worked as an agricultural scientist and was appointed a minister in her home country, Rwanda. She is now the head of a pan-African organization, driving action to transform smallholder farming into a thriving business so that other girls can get the opportunities she did.

That girl, as you may have guessed, was me, but it could have been any other girl given the same opportunities. I share this story so that together we can strive to unleash the potential of all rural girls.

Instead, in Africa today, more than 49 million girls are out of primary and secondary school. Early marriage and teenage pregnancy are common, with 40 percent of girls getting married before they turn 18 years old. A rural girl who marries in her teens has almost zero chance of completing her secondary education. I have seen this firsthand. Over half of my female schoolmates were married by 16 years old, some as early as 13 years, as their families sought a dowry to ease their poverty.
 

So what can we do about it? Based on our work with our partners to make smallholder farming a thriving business and from my personal experience, I am convinced that agriculture is key to giving African families and rural girls a good start in life.

But for agriculture to achieve this ambition, it must first transform. If we invest in farmers, giving them access to better seeds and linking them to functional national and regional markets, incomes will double or even triple. Increased incomes bring truly significant benefits. First, farmers have the means to diversify into livestock and build an even stronger income base for themselves. This is what my parents did. Their cows helped see me and my siblings through school. Second, families can use hired farm machinery and labor, potentially freeing their daughters from daily domestic work in order to go to school. Because when money is tight, the male child’s education gets priority.

But it isn’t just about educating the girls. Men still hold the lion’s share of positions of influence and power in Africa. To empower women, we need to empower and educate boys and men to understand that girls and women are just as good as they are and must be given opportunities to realize their full potential. I was lucky enough to come of age as a professional in Rwanda, a country with one of the highest rates of female labor force participation in the world. Under President Paul Kagame, who shows an unwavering commitment to gender equality, women are getting opportunities and having a say. I am one of them. I have seen what can happen when men in positions of power do not discriminate.

By boosting agriculture across Africa, hence giving a huge chunk of our population the resources to educate their children, we can change the fabric and trajectory of our society. And change is happening, however slowly. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, countries like Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda, which make significant investments in agriculture, have seen productivity rise by up to 6 percent per year, spurring an average annual GDP increase of over 4 percent. Ethiopia is reducing rural poverty at a rate of 4 percent per year. Rwanda has reduced poverty by 25 percent in the last 15 years. Southeast Asia shows us how successful the agricultural investment strategy can be. Vietnam, for example, has since 1986 reduced poverty from 56 to 3 percent. China has moved over 440 million people out of poverty.
 

The path to success is so clear, but we still continue to waste the minds and talents of the world’s most dynamic and young population. I got to where I am today not because I was special or lucky, but because my family did everything to ensure I had access to education. They did this through farming. Backing smallholders will allow other families to do the same—and let our girls finally show the world just what they can do.