Gender paradoxes and agricultural monopoly in Nigeria: implications for policy and food (in)security in Africa

Abstract

There is no doubt that Africa today is food challenged (insecure) and confront huge poverty despite the fact that much of African lands are arable and suitable for agriculture. This is essentially paradoxical. While policies and scholarly attempts have focused the roles of mechanization, processing, subsidies, redistribution, export and, recently, climate change, the role of gender relative to sustainability, social justice, exclusion/inclusion and agricultural optimization for food security remains largely policy and scholarly appendages. This is however not surprising given the patriarchal econo-social and power relations in most African societies only also playing out in land and agricultural space. It is impossible to have agriculture without the important roles of women, as women are responsible for about 80 percent of agricultural productions through their small farm holdings. Yet, local and global monopolies do not factor in the role of women sufficiently and often marginalize women thereby creating a gulf of sidelined critical gender mass. This gender sidelining is not only in terms of access to land, but also in terms of access to inputs, food and agricultural commodity markets that are mostly male dominated. This is more so in exchange and transactional terms as well as at policy domains. This paper thus maintains that the continued lack of real, substantial and practical appreciation of the role of women in agriculture through policies, interventions and practices contributes highly to the high level of food insecurity and policy failures in Africa and this only demonstrate the unsustainability of current lopsided agricultural monopolies in Africa. This paper brings useful Nigerian case studies that will contribute immensely to the ongoing debate on the problematic in manners that will enrich scholarship, policy and practice on the continent.