Hillary Clinton: Liberate the economic potential of rural women to fight hunger and poverty

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been speaking out about gender equality in the international arena since at least 1995, when she delivered a forceful message on women’s rights as human rights at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. So it was no surprise that the rights of rural women figured prominently in her remarks last week at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security.

Webcast image of Hillary Clinton speaking at 18 May
symposium in Washington, DC.

Organized by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and held in Washington, DC, the symposium preceded this year’s G8 summit of world leaders. It provided a forum for high-level discussions of sustainable agricultural development and the setting for President Barack Obama’s announcement of a G8 initiative – the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition – which aims to reduce hunger and lift 50 million rural people out of poverty in the next decade. 

Secretary Clinton’s speech at the event covered a range of issues on investing in global agriculture to solve the problems of malnutrition and extreme poverty. Perhaps its most passionate section dealt with the largely untapped potential of rural women to help feed the world, a topic that is also central to IFAD’s recently adopted gender policy. Excerpts from the Clinton speech follow.


I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that I am convinced women are critical to our success in every field of endeavour. And this is not a matter of sentiment or personal interest on my part. This is also actually a fact-based, evidence-based statement. It has been said that the modern face of hunger is often a woman’s face, because in many parts of the world, women still eat last and eat least.

The face of a farmer is often a woman’s face as well. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, women comprise nearly half of the agricultural workforce across Africa. So if we want to support farmers, we also have to support women farmers. And that is not something that happens automatically. It has to be part of a deliberate, determined strategy that takes gender equality into account across everything we are doing.

And the results speak for themselves. The FAO estimates that if women farmers had the same access to productive resources as men – seeds, credit, insurance, land title, and so on – they could increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 per cent. And that, in turn, could raise total agricultural output so much it could reduce the number of hungry people worldwide by up to 150 million.

Now the obstacles that stand in the way of women’s equal access to resources in agriculture or anything else are, unfortunately, formidable. They include laws, deeply held traditions, lack of information, plain old inertia, and we have to overcome each and every one of them. We can’t just hope that women get the support they need as a side effect of our work. We have to push for it. And it’s not optional. It’s not marginal. It’s not a luxury. It’s not expendable. It happens to be essential, or we will never reach our goals….

When we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations and the world.

‘No empty promises’ at pre-G8 symposium on advancing food security

IFAD President Kanayo F. Nwanze is in impressive company today at a high-level symposium on agricultural development and food security. Held in Washington, DC, and organized by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the all-day session takes place in connection with this year’s G8 summit of world leaders.

Planting maize seeds in Mswagini village, Tanzania.
©IFAD/Mwanzo Millingan

Like the summit itself – which President Barack Obama will host tomorrow at Camp David – the symposium is taking a serious and long overdue look at how the G8 nations can most effectively advance food and nutrition security in the developing world.

Among the other participants in the event are President Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Presidents of Benin, Ghana and Tanzania, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the Administrator of USAID, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, the pop star and activist Bono, and many more.

Their presence reflects a growing international consensus that, as Nwanze said today, “food security is the foundation for global security.”

New Alliance for sustainability
In a keynote speech at the symposium this morning, Obama echoed that sentiment. “Food security is a moral imperative, but it’s also an economic imperative…and it’s a security imperative,” he said. “Reducing hunger and malnutrition around the world enhances peace and security.”

Obama went on to announce a G8 initiative, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which he called “a major new partnership to reduce hunger and lift tens of millions of people from poverty.”

Rather than relying inordinately upon emergency aid to address cyclical crises, Obama said, the alliance will honour the commitments to global food security that the G8 made at their 2009 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy. Beyond those commitments, the G8 governments and their partners will also launch substantial new programmes in support of sustainable agriculture, with a special focus on Africa.

“No empty promises,” Obama said, adding that the New Alliance will begin with projects in Ethiopia, Ghana and Tanzania – “but this is just the beginning.” Over the next decade, the initiative aims to help 50 million rural people overcome poverty.

Africa’s potential
IFAD, WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization welcomed the launch of the New Alliance, and the Rome-based UN agencies will remain engaged in its rollout. At a symposium panel on trade and food security, IFAD’s Nwanze shared his thoughts on the need for such an undertaking, especially in many African nations.

“Africa is the last frontier,” Nwanze said, explaining that the continent holds greater potential for agricultural development than any other region – if only because it has under-produced for so long. To realize that potential and compete internationally, he said, Africa’s smallholder farmers need “sound, vibrant and sustainable domestic markets.” Strong domestic markets, in turn, hinge upon adequate infrastructure, technology, innovation and investment.

The New Alliance is slated to be active in all of these areas.

‘An enabling environment’
Of course, small-scale farmers are, themselves, central to the agricultural private sector. As rural entrepreneurs, they must be full partners in any effort to make a mass transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture.

Therefore, Nwanze said today, “we need to have strong farmer organizations. Where farmers are organized, particularly women farmers, they begin to thrive.” By creating “an enabling environment for smallholders,” he concluded, the partners in the New Alliance can bring lasting, positive change to rural Africa and beyond.

As the G8 leaders grapple with a host of thorny economic and political issues at their summit this weekend, let’s hope they remain focused on the imperative to end hunger and food insecurity worldwide. To do anything less, as the US President so aptly put it, would be “an affront to who we are.”


Below: Watch an IFAD video on increasing  food security in African countries based on increased private sector investments in agriculture, in line with the current G8 agenda.