By RABECCA CHIPANTA –
FIRST Lady Esther Lungu has said empowering rural women will lead to agricultural growth and poverty eradication.
Ms Lungu said ending poverty in developing countries, including Zambia, would depend on the attention given to rural women, as they were the primary agents of change in the fight against hunger and poverty in their communities.
Ms Lungu said this during her keynote speech at a side-event co-organised by FAO, IFAD, WFP, UN Women, the EU and the Permanent Mission of Slovak to the UN, under the theme: “Step It Up Together with Rural Women to End Hunger and Poverty” on the first-day of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW61) in New York.
According to a statement made available by First Secretary for Press at the United Nations Chibaula Silwamba, Ms Lungu noted that in the developing world, rural agriculture was the sustenance of the majority of people in particular women.
“We all agree that extreme poverty manifests mostly in rural areas of developing countries where statistics indicate that on average, women comprise 43 per cent of the agricultural labour force and contribute 70 percent of labour,” she said.
She explained that President Edgar Lungu had directed that the policy on allocating 50 per cent of state land to women must be enforced without fail adding that traditional leaders were required to provide a minimum of 100 hectares of land to women cooperatives.
Ms Lungu said that there was a provision for individual women to be allocated land in line with the mechanisation programme for rural women in agriculture.
She said that last year the Ministry of Gender had distributed 51 tractors and 94 tillers to 100 chiefdoms out of the earmarked 288.
Ms Lungu said advocacy continued to be top of her agenda and was focusing on tackling social-cultural norms, attitudes and behaviours that need elimination or adjustment.
She explained that she had engaged spouses of traditional leaders to be the transformational champions in addressing deep rooted cultural gender inequalities in rural areas.
Ms Lungu expressed concern that due to climate change, effects such as drought and flooding lead to many women losing their crops, which was their only investment which forced them to seek employment from emergent and large scale farmers where they faced risks.
“I speak with passion and give firsthand testimony having had the opportunity to traverse the rural areas of Zambia and I am sure I speak for many women in developing nations, who have for a long time been shackled with the chains of harsh conditions,” she said.