No Development without Better Life for Rural Women - A Case of Tanzania

Tanzania has a broad scope for agricultural diversification and a great potential to enhance production through agricultural intensification. The country has 945,090 km of land and 40 million ha (i.e. 42%) is cultivatable; but only 16% (6.3 million ha.) are currently being cultivated.

Despite a rich endowment of natural resources, good climate and abundant land, Tanzania’s agriculture performance is unsatisfactory due to exclusive of women in agriculture policies making. Therefore poverty eradication will not become reality in Africa unless all women, particularly rural women, enjoyed better living conditions and when Africa governments and regional economic communities combat the liberalization policies in Agriculture and develop Agricultural policies that can help their people reach food security. In Tanzania’s rural services and infrastructure are extremely poor and underdeveloped. African women play a key role in food production and supply, the real value of their contribution is not valued enough for the part it plays in the gross domestic product, (Dr. Sophia Mlote, 2014).

Moreover, in Tanzania women’s skill and knowledge of the age – old technologies they use in food production, processing and preservation are not recognized as they should be and are not showcased accordingly. For instance in Zimbabwe nearly 20% percent of women own the land they use, Kenya 3% percent while in Tanzania only one percent of women enjoyed the right to land. Hence this poverty is by and large in the rural areas. Most poor and marginalized groups are women, the agriculture sector as main workforce that makes a huge contribution to food production in African countries. This is why there is a talk of feminization of Poverty in Africa. This article presents the implications for agricultural Policies in Africa and consequences for Africa’s Rural Women as well as mitigations toward those consequences.

Keywords: Mainstreaming, inequalities in Agriculture