Over the last several months, reports of a global food crisis have made frequent and alarming appearances in the nightly news. According to The World Food Programme, this spike in food prices has forced 100 million people into extreme poverty. For the billions of people who live on less than $2 a day, the stakes of their daily struggle for survival have been raised impossibly high.
Click here to read the Washington Post's Article: Africa's Last and Least
- Increase in current food prices has forced 100 million people into extreme poverty.
- At least 18 million of Afghanistan's estimated 26.6 million people cannot meet their daily food and nutritional requirements.
- Agribusiness holds the greatest potential, providing a model to simultaneously address both income generation and food security.
- Women for Women introduces Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI) program.
- CIFI will provide 3,000 women with training in how to use sustainable farming practices to grow crops, sell for profit and feed their families.
In every single country where Women for Women International works, this crisis is a life and death reality for the women we serve and even for our staff, who reside in the same communities and struggle alongside their sisters. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has said that at least 18 million of Afghanistan's estimated 26.6 million people, mostly women and children, cannot meet their daily food and nutritional requirements.
In Nigeria, women in our program report that rising food costs render feeding their families three meals a day impossible. One program participant said, "The price of food is high, making money valueless. My children are now crying for more food but I cannot give [it to] them because my money cannot fetch enough food."
Through our experience and research it became clear that agribusiness holds great potential for many of our women — it provides a model to simultaneously address both income generation and food security, two critical issues for socially excluded women and their families. To help us develop and implement agribusiness opportunities, we are honored to welcome one of the newest members of our team, Agribusiness Specialist Dr. Grace F. Fisiy. Grace comes to Women for Women International with 20 years of agricultural and rural development experience.
During her first few months with us, Grace traveled to Rwanda to launch our first ever Commercial Integrated Farming Initiative (CIFI), a program designed to provide specialized, sustainable agribusiness opportunities to program participants.
CIFI will provide 3,000 women over the course of three years with training in how to use sustainable farming practices to grow crops that can both be sold for profit in the local market and feed their families. So far we have been able to secure funding to pilot CIFI in both Rwanda and Sudan. The next country in which we hope to launch a comparable program will be Afghanistan, a country that desperately needs food relief and income generation opportunities.
When Grace was asked about the direct impact of CIFI on the current, global food crisis, she responded by drawing clear connections between the two: "We are tackling the food crisis on multiple fronts. CIFI's primary focus is commercial farming - production for the market — and this also directly impacts household food production and food security. Women are learning sustainable farming methods to cultivate higher-income crops, like pineapples and strawberries, which they can sell on the local market."
In this way the CIFI program design encompasses a multifaceted attack on the global food crisis, providing participants with a critical model for sustainable income generation and food production that benefits not only individual women but also their families and communities.
Thanks to the visionary work of Women for Women staff and a strong partnership with the Rwandan government, 100 acres of land is dedicated to these women, and to the continually evolving work of Women for Women International. It is our hope that initiatives like CIFI will not only benefit the community as a whole, but will also inspire other communities and countries to engage women as vital participants in sustainable solutions to the world's problems.
