Issue 23 of Southern Lens on Development by Prof. Jane Mariara
Each year on International Women's Day, attention turns to the barriers holding women back. Women across sub-Saharan Africa provide the majority of agricultural labour, yet consistently earn less, own less, and benefit less from the innovations designed to transform their sector. As Smart Agriculture—powered by artificial intelligence, robotics, and big data—spreads across the continent, we must ask whether these innovations will address the existing inequalities or entrench them.
Research supported by the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) across Tanzania, Benin, Malawi, Guinea-Bissau, and beyond suggests that the answer has less to do with the technology itself than how it is designed and delivered. The evidence shows what can be achieved when innovations are designed with women in mind, delivered through systems that reach them, and backed by policies that dismantle structural inequalities.
Closing the Productivity Gap
Findings from Tanzania on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) illustrate what becomes possible when women are included. Among households that did not adopt CSA practices, female-managed plots were 24% less productive than those managed by men. When both men and women adopt technologies such as improved seeds and soil erosion controls, that gap effectively closed.
Evidence from Benin's contract farming programmes deepens this picture. Women farmers who received certified seeds, technical training, and price guarantees saw yields increase by 73%, compared to 42% for men in the same programmes. Women not only benefited more from the interventions; they acquired technical knowledge as effectively as men and translated that knowledge into higher yields at a greater rate.
When provided with equivalent support, women demonstrate that the gender productivity gap is purely due to circumstance.
How We Deliver Resources Matters
The Benin research goes further by comparing delivery models. When women were the primary beneficiaries of training and inputs (rather than the household being treated as the unit of support) both spouses benefited through intra-household knowledge sharing, and gender disparities in productivity and knowledge narrowed. Directing support to women did not come at a cost to men; it strengthened the household as a whole while reducing inequality within it.
Meanwhile, the evaluation of a cashew sector helpline in Guinea-Bissau demonstrates what happens when social norms override intervention implementation. Project guidelines recommended that women be selected as community liaisons, recognising evidence that female intermediaries improve women farmers' access to information. Local authorities very rarely followed this guidance. Social norms determined who became the point of contact, and those norms reproduced male dominance in the information channels. Delivery systems need to be designed with an understanding of the social context they operate in, and include monitoring for gender outcomes as well as of reach and uptake. Otherwise, as the Guinea-Bissau case shows, they risk reproducing the very inequalities they were designed to address.
Structural Barriers, Not Behavioural Deficits
A thread common to these studies is the need to distinguish between barriers that appear behavioural and those that are structural. In Malawi, apparent gender gaps in adopting erosion-control practices disappeared once researchers accounted for access to land and quality extension services. The findings from Tanzania similarly identify unequal access to land and production inputs as a primary driver of women's lower productivity.
The Malawi evidence adds a further layer of complexity. Even when accessing support programmes, women often received lower-grade inputs than men, reflecting entrenched hierarchies in distribution systems and resulting in lower yields for women farmers.
When women’s lower productivity is framed as being due to behavioural traits (unwilling to adopt new technology, for example) the problem remains misdiagnosed and points policy in the wrong direction. Women's ability to benefit from innovation is consistently limited by gaps in production capital, credit, and information. Closing the gender gap in agricultural outcomes requires closing the gap in the resources that women actually receive, not just in what they are offered.
Making Innovation Inclusive by Design
Innovations must also take account of underlying social norms. The intra-household dimension of addressing the agricultural gender gap deserves particular attention.
In Benin, some men were initially reluctant to allow their wives to participate in training, citing concerns about their own authority. The implementing agency spent considerable time sensitising and convincing men that the intervention would benefit the entire household. These efforts paid off. All farmers targeted for the intervention participated fully: knowledge sharing within the household increased and yields rose, turning initial resistance into shared benefit.
The evidence from these PEP-supported studies consistently shows that genuine inclusion requires deliberate choices at every stage: from what is designed, to who delivers it, to how households and communities are engaged in the process.
When women are the direct focus of programme design and delivery, everybody wins: productivity improves and household welfare increases.
What examples have you seen of agricultural innovation that has successfully reached and benefited women? I welcome your reflections as we continue to explore the theme of innovation in the lead up to the 2026 PEP Policy Conference on Rethinking the Future of Innovation.
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