Promote Women Empowerment As Hunger Increases–World Bank

Tayo Olanipekun, Washington DC

As the number of people who suffer from hunger worldwide climbed steadily in recent years, the situation can only improve if governments empower the women, increase agricultural productivity and promote technological change, the World Bank has said.

Land management and feeding of the growing market will also give the estimated 3.4 billion in the rural space the opportunity to access urgently needed care and provide their children the chances of completing high school.

These steps, if taken, will stem the tide of increase in the figure of the world’s hungry that rose from 796 million in 2016 to 822 million in 2018, according to the institution.

World Bank Vice President, Sustainable Development, Laural Tuck, made this known in Washington DC on Wednesday during the institution’s ongoing Annual Meeting.

Eighty per cent of the world’s extreme poor live in the rural areas, with the figure of those not covered by broadband standing at 1.2 billion in an era where online platforms like Ali Baba and Amazon are opening up selling and buying opportunities for billions of people, including farmers.

This is as another 1 billion live more than two kilometers away from an all-weather road, hindering their access to the market and leading to wastage of farm produce.

“We have the opportunities in the areas of increased agricultural productivity, technological change, support for growing market,  gender equality and land management,” said Tuck.

Figures from the World Bank show that increased crop yields in East Africa in the past 40 years has contributed to “dramatic poverty reduction” in the region, with emphasis that about three folds growth in agriculture is “more effective at reducing poverty than other sectors.”

Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, recently said their is no hunger in the country, contrary to claims by various sources indicating that insurgency in the northern part of the country has left many people malnourished.

“I think we are producing enough now to feed ourselves and I think there is no hunger but if you say inconveniences I would agree,” he was reported to have said at a press conference.

A charitable organisation, Oxfam, has always maintained that in Nigeria, 70 per cent of small holder farmers are women who usually lack access to land ownership and farm input due to religious beliefs and local customs.