Female farmers play a vital role in African agriculture, accounting for
the majority of the agricultural workforce. However, agricultural
research and higher education are disproportionately led by men. There
is an urgent need for greater representation of women in the field of
agricultural science and technology (S&T) in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Female scientists, professors, and senior managers offer different
insights and perspectives to help research institutes to more fully
address the unique and pressing challenges of both female and male
farmers in the region. Gender-disaggregated data on S&T capacity are
scarce, often lack sufficient detail, and focus more generally on
S&T rather than on agriculture specifically. Data are not always
comparable due to different methodologies and coverage. The Agricultural
Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative and the CGIAR
Gender & Diversity (G&D) Program partnered together to address
this information gap. This report presents the results of an in-depth
benchmarking survey on gender-disaggregated capacity indicators,
covering 125 agricultural research and higher education agencies in 15
countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is the first study of its kind to
present detailed human resources data on female participation in
agricultural science, the main findings of which include the following: •
Total capacity in terms of the professional staff employed at the
agricultural research and higher education agencies included in this
study increased by 20 percent between 2000/01 and 2007/08, and women
constituted almost half of this capacity increase. The female population
of professional staff grew by eight percent per year on average, which
is four times higher than the comparable rate of increase for the male
population, indicating that the gender gap in African agricultural
sciences is closing. • The proportion of female professional staff
employed at the sample agricultural research and higher education
agencies increased from 18 percent in 2000/01 to 24 percent in 2007/08,
but fewer women have advanced degrees compared to their male colleagues.
In 2007/08, for example, 27 percent of the sample’s professional women
held PhD degrees compared with 37 percent of the sample’s professional
men. • Of concern, about two-thirds of the overall (female and male)
capacity increase comprised staff holding only BSc degrees, indicating
that the overall quality of capacity in agricultural research and higher
education is declining in some Sub-Saharan African countries. Notably,
the total number of male professional staff trained to the MSc level
declined between 2000/01 and 2007/08; however, more in-depth analysis is
needed to explain the underlying causes of these shifts and to what
degree they represent structural changes. • Levels of female
participation in agricultural research and higher education among the
sample agencies were particularly low in Ethiopia (6 percent), Togo (9
percent), Niger (10 percent), and Burkina Faso (12 percent). Shares of
female professional staff were much higher in South Africa, Mozambique,
and Botswana (32, 35, and 41 percent, respectively). • The female share
of students enrolled in higher agricultural education was higher than
the female shares of professional staff employed at the agricultural
research and higher education agencies in most cases, but a significant
proportion of the female students concerned were undertaking only
BSc-level studies (83 percent). • Only 14 percent of the management
positions were held by women, which is considerably lower than the share
of female professional staff employed at the sample’s agricultural
research and higher education agencies (24 percent). • The pool of
female staff is much younger on average than the pool of male staff. •
The prevalence of female professional staff is comparatively higher in
fields related to life and social sciences, and comparatively lower in
fields involving areas traditionally thought of as “hard science”, such
as engineering.
"When I sleep, all I think about is the potatoes – they are helping my dreams come true."
