By Abisola Alaka

It is a known fact that rural women in Africa are at the heart of the food supply chain – production, handling and storage, processing and packaging, distribution and marketing, and consumption. Thus, the active engagement of rural women in agriculture is necessary, if improved food security and nutrition in Africa is to be achieved.
The multitude of shocks and crises, nonetheless, repeatedly hinder them from actively involving into and benefiting from the full potential of the sector. Droughts, famines, floods and landslides are common challenges that every farming woman is facing frequently. Harsh plant and animal diseases also pose unprecedented and disproportionate threats against these segments of the society, affecting harvests and livestock.
If we take the Eastern Africa region as an example, the 2020 Regional Report on Food Crises indicated that about 28 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Uganda were classified in crisis or worse levels of food insecurity. This figure represents around 20 percent of the global total number of acutely food-insecure people in need of urgent humanitarian food assistance.
Weather extremes, conflict and animal and plant diseases are attributed to this calamity. The recent invasion of Desert Locust and Fall Armyworm have also destroyed thousands of hectares of crops in the subregion. In Ethiopia, floods displaced over 300 000 people, of which women and children takes up the bigger proportion.
In recent months, we are witnessing the spread of Covid-19, leaving the agriculture sector and the farming households in the realm of uncertainties. The invasion is projected to take an immense human toll in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 110 million people by some estimates. The immediate economic consequences of the pandemic for African economies are also estimated to be severe, resulting in the first regional recession in nearly 25 years and pushing an estimated 23 million more people into extreme poverty. In the face of the human and economic crisis caused by Covid-19, existing gender inequalities in economic opportunities may worsen, as was seen in previous large-scale health shocks such as the Ebola epidemic.
Rural women are disproportionately affected by Covid-19
While the health aspects of the pandemic have not affected rural areas as much as urban centres, containment measures pose new challenges to rural women with regards to their roles in household food security, as agricultural producers, farm managers, processors, traders, wage workers and entrepreneurs. Past experience shows that rural women are disproportionally affected by health and economic crises in a number of ways, including but not limited to, food security and nutrition, access to health facilities, services and economic opportunities, and gender-based violence (GBV).
The vulnerability of rural women to disasters and crises emanates from the lower economic and social positions they hold in the society. Inequalities in exposure and sensitivity to risk as well as inequalities in access to information, resources, capabilities and opportunities systematically disadvantage rural women, rendering them more vulnerable to the impact of crises.
Rural women also have limited savings or assets to endure external shocks or survive the crises. Recovery periods are often challenging for rural women because of their limited access to farmlands and other productive resources. Securing farm inputs, extension services and microfinance services are hard to come by to resume farming activities. They are also required to work harder to carry out the functions of daily living for their families. This can include lining up for relief supplies and having to travel farther to access water or firewood in challenging conditions. Furthermore, they have to care for the sick; and seek employment, if the main breadwinner is killed during the crises.
What can governments and institutions do to support rural women in times of crises?
In the spirit of the 2030 Agenda and “Leaving No One Behind,” the focus of the disaster risk management actions should be on the most vulnerable, particularly on rural women. Interventions should explicitly recognise the specific constraints faced by rural women during and after crises in maintaining household and national food security and nutrition. Building and enhancing the capacities of organisations and communities are imperative to enable gender mainstreaming into disaster risk management plans. In doing so, collecting gender-specific data and statistics on the impact of disasters, vulnerability risk and capacities are crucial to formulate and implement relevant programmes.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) works with member states to support the design of gender-responsive policy measures in crises, including Covid-19, to address the needs of rural women. It promotes the collection of sex-disaggregated data and evidence to assess the gendered impact of crises and the measures to contain them to inform policy interventions.
FAO pays attention to the long-term responses that support women farmers by enhancing equitable access to and control over productive resources, inputs and rural services.
Gender equality is essential for attaining food security, nutrition and achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By providing equal provision of rural services, it is possible to facilitate the access to education, health facilities and productive resources so as to protect them from and build their resilience to major crises that include Covid-19.

Abisola Alaka is Senior Administrative Officer at FAO Subregional Office for Eastern Africa

By Dawit Bisrat
-Up to now, Ethiopia has evaded the worst of the coronavirus pandemic-but that may be changing. What for two months was just a trickle of reported cases of infection is swelling into what could become a flood. In my role heading the Ethiopia office of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of the global public health organization Vital Strategies, I have seen firsthand how our national and local health systems have made use of the time to prepare for the coming deluge. Now, as the storm begins to rage around us, we must build on the improvements already undertaken, so we can come out on the other side of this pandemic even stronger than when we began.
The slow advance of the virus gave Ethiopia time to prepare. Steps the government took within days of the first reported case-such as canceling sporting events and closing schools-were crucial to delaying spread of the virus. Later measures such as limiting passengers on public transit systems and rationing the roadways, thus reducing travel between regions, have also bought us time.
But these tough public health and social measures can’t be sustained indefinitely, and the public needs support to continue adhering to them even in the short term. Without help, most Ethiopians say lockdowns will exhaust their money within a week and half will run out of food, according to a recent survey by the Partnership for Evidence-Based Responses to COVID-19. That’s why our health system has been implementing changes to handle a surge of infected patients, and to fortify the country against the disease in the long term.
Just months ago, even in Addis Ababa it was rare to come across a place to wash your hands. Now at the gates of every hospital there is a hand-washing station, and similar facilities have sprung up outside markets, hotels and houses of worship-to the point where frequently cleaning one’s hands is commonplace. To address scarcities of washing facilities, local innovators have developed new types of contactless soap dispensers and foot-operated handwashing stations. Not only do these simple improvements in hygiene curb coronavirus; they also protect against other infectious diseases. Given that diarrheal disease is the second leading cause of death among the country’s children, sustaining this in the long-term would save lives well after coronavirus is behind us.
The pandemic has also prompted overdue investment in the country’s beleaguered health care workforce. Tens of thousands of health extension workers who formerly helped the country reduce maternal mortality are now being trained to identify and refer suspected cases of COVID-19. The government has also signaled its support for doctors and nurses by offering life insurance to those who risk exposure to the disease-although the government must still do more to ensure that health workers have sufficient personal protective equipment to work safely. A stronger health care workforce, one that is effectively trained and equipped, will make for a more effective response to coronavirus as well as to other ongoing health challenges such as tuberculosis and HIV.
The pandemic has forced national and local health systems to coordinate better together, too, and we’ve seen huge improvements in how they swiftly distribute needed resources across the country. In the past, it took weeks to send medicine and other supplies to rural health centers and district hospitals on the peripheries of the health system; now those shipments arrive in days. The crisis has produced new collaborations, too, including a partnership with Ethiopian Airlines, whose mechanics have serviced some of the country’s scarce mechanical ventilators.
Most fundamentally, COVID-19 is prompting new thinking about the governance of health. Early in the pandemic, the country established a high-level ministerial task force to coordinate the national response, exemplifying the kind of intra-governmental cooperation we need in all our public health endeavors. The country has also used emergency assistance to increase health spending, a break from years when health expenditures as a share of GDP had not risen. Ethiopia has an opportunity to lock in those increases and prioritize further investment in its people’s well-being.
The course that the pandemic will take is up to us. But if Ethiopia makes smart choices, we have the chance to ensure that early success against COVID yields lasting improvements to our health systems.

Dawit Bisrat is the Country Representative (Ethiopia) at Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies