Nigeria team to represent RIU at gender and agriculture event
8 December 2010

Grace Jokthan of RIU Nigeria is to represent the RIU at a workshop on gender and market-oriented agriculture being held in Addis Ababa from 31 January-2 February 2011.

She will be joined by Agnes Ushang Ingwu from Abanbeke Development Association (ADA) in Cross River State in South East Nigeria. ADA is a small community-based organization that works mainly on women's rights issues amongst the Bette people in Nigeria. ADA is also working closely with RIU on the Cassava Innovation Platform and other agricultural developments.

The workshop, which is being organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its Improving Productivity and Market Success of Ethiopia Farmers project, aims to:

• bring together researchers, practitioners, private sector and donors that have been working on efforts to promote market oriented agriculture in which gender is an integral component, to share lessons
• synthesize lessons on what works in integrating gender and promoting women to participate in and benefit from agricultural markets
• collate empirical evidence of the poverty, equity, food security and nutritional impacts of market-oriented agriculture
• begin to build a new paradigm for market-oriented research and funding that serves the interests of women

Grace Jokthan said:

"We are delighted to be representing RIU at this workshop. Through our link with Abanbeke Development Association, we have seen a huge change in the life chances and status of some of the 3,000 women we have worked with. There are some very harsh practices for widows in the Bette culture, which impact on their ability to support their families after the death of their husbands. It is important that we have Agnes at the conference because she has firsthand experience of the negative effect of these patriarchal practices. She has a clear agenda for what she wants to achieve and she is making good headway. I think we will be able to share what we know but also learn a great deal about what other people are doing, which I can then feed into the next RIU team meeting in March 2011."

Gender and Market-oriented Agriculture 2011 (AgriGender 2011): From Research to Practice will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The workshop will bring together researchers, agriculture development practitioners, donors and policymakers working in Africa and other regions to give women greater access to markets and value chains. The global dialogue will have a focus on East Africa, but will bring in relevant experiences from elsewhere in the world.