Agricultural Development

Formally including Ugandan women in commercial agriculture—through contract ownership or behavior-change interventions—can increase women’s empowerment without reducing productivity, and with positive spillovers for household welfare and gender relations.Estimates suggest that there are 475 million smallholder farms in low- and middle-income countries, including 43 million in sub-Saharan Africa (Lowder et al. 2016, FAO 2017).

In many agricultural markets, the limited ability to measure product quality at the source and trace it through the supply chain remains a key barrier to improvement, as the absence of reliable quality information blunts incentives for upstream actors to invest in better practices. This challenge spans a wide range of value chains, but it is especially pronounced in the dairy sector. Milk from smallholder farmers is typically pooled and transported through multiple intermediaries before reaching processors, making it difficult to observe and reward high-quality production at any stage.

Since April 2023, the Sudan has suffered from violent conflict that has displaced wide swathes of the population, significantly disrupted the economy, and led to skyrocketing unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity. Between December 2024 and May 2024, more than half of the country’s population experienced IPC Phase 3 food insecurity or higher, and millions of Sudanese have been without reliable access to food, healthcare, housing, and other critical services.

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face growing pressure to produce more on less land while contending with worsening impacts of climate change. The need for sustainable intensification has rekindled calls for a “Green Revolution” in the region, centered on the widespread adoption of modern inputs such as hybrid seeds and inorganic fertilizers. But introducing new agricultural technologies is not just a matter of making such inputs available; it also requires convincing farmers to try them.

The Food Security Portal has released a new Spanish-language version of the Pro-WEAI )Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index) Fundamentals e-course. The course provides a comprehensive introduction to the pro-WEAI tool, including its background and methodology and how to apply the tool in local and project-level contests. The Fundamentals course is now available in English, French, Arabic, and Spanish. Four additional Pro-WEAI modules are available in English.