Policy brief: delivering Women farmers’ rights

The 2003 Maputo Declaration on Food and Agriculture committed signatory countries across Africa to a 10% allocation of national budgets to agriculture by 2008. To bolster the implementation of this commitment, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) was established. But 12 years later, the situation for women smallholder farmers across Africa has hardly changed. Even allowing for Africa’s diversity and varying policy and legal contexts, the disproportionately low levels of access to and control over productive resources by women – and limited efforts to match policy directives with programmes on the ground – is widespread across Africa.