Transforming Women’s Roles in Africa’s Cassava Value Chain: The UN Women-IOFS Partnership
The food security of Sub-Saharan Africa has relied on cassava particularly because of its climate resilience and its ability to grow in marginal soils. Although women were the dominant with regards to the cultivation, harvesting and processing of it, their efforts are often undervalued and unequivocal. The 2025 collaboration between UN Women and the Islamic Organization of Food Security (IOFS) is one such response, where both parties plan to break the cycles of limiting women as central stakeholders in the Africa cassava value chain.
In a national consultation in Abuja, Nigeria, stakeholders showed issues that women have always struggled with such as absence of access to modern equipment, finance, and market ties. The labor use of low productivity is dominated by manual processing and this limits the ability of women to gain through economic gains. Lack of cooperation systems further alienates women of value-added facilities, as well as policy participation.
The partnership between the UN Women and the IOFS aims at turning this tide by addressing structural change. Their plan entails using technology, financial access, and cooperative development together with gender-sensitive policymaking to transform women subsistence labourers into agri-entrepreneurs to guarantee their fair share in the development of the cassava industry.
Strategic priorities of the UN Women-IOFS collaboration
It focuses on female-oriented agricultural and agribusiness training in the partnership. Programs are aimed to raise technical awareness on cassava production, enhance business management, and widen the availability of information on climate-smart practices. These programs will cover both the existing productivity constraints and upcoming challenges that will be associated with climate change and market instability.
UN Women has also initiated the use of region-based training programs in partnership with farming schools and extension services, as part of this effort. These are modules of pest management, mechanization processing and cooperative governance. The collaboration also gives preference to peer to peer models of learning where successful businesses by women can mentor others.
Promoting sustainable technology for productivity
One of the key elements of the project is the application of eco-friendly technologies that will decrease the workload and enhance productivity. Mechanized graters, solar-driven dryers and pressers have already been sold to some cooperatives in Nigeria and Ghana. The tools have greatly reduced the processing time and have enabled more quality and quantity of cassava products.
The focus on green energy and non-polluting equipment is also compatible with general environmental objectives. The innovations will be useful in promoting climate resilience by addressing the energy bottleneck in cassava processing and allow women to earn more income by producing value-added products such as cassava flour, chips, and starch.
Financial access and market connectivity
Lack of access to affordable credit remains a significant obstacle for women. The inability to access cheap credit is still a major setback to women in the cassava-based businesses. Most of them are in the informal economies and they do not have collateral to apply in getting a conventional bank loan. To curb this, the joint venture will encourage microfinance programs on soft terms, group loans to lending, and agricultural-specific insurance products.
The initiative also ensures that women with limited mobility or education can also be served by the digital platforms since the company is working together with local financial institutions and fintech startups. These efforts are supplemented by financial literacy training which will enable women to have the means of handling credit responsibly and investing towards expanding their businesses.
Strengthening market access through cooperative models
The fragmented supply chains and restricted access to buyers outside of the local markets have been the problem with market engagement. The UN Women-IOFS approach empowers collective bargaining by women via cooperation. Women groups are in a better position to bargain on pricing and quality demands by the regional buyers by consolidating supply and uniforming production.
Women led cooperatives in Benin and Sierra Leone are now being linked to regional food processing companies and export platforms through pilot projects. Such market relations not only guarantee increased incomes, but also mitigate price shock vulnerability, which is experienced by individual producers.
Advancing household welfare and community resilience
The greater involvement and earnings of women in the activities of cassava processing lead to greater socio-economic gains. Studies have always demonstrated that women reinvest more of their earnings in household welfare which consists of nutrition, health and education. The multiplier effect enhances food security and quality of life especially in the rural settlements where the public services are not developed yet.
The project meets some of the major international development objectives such as SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality). Through repositioning cassava value chains, there is strengthening of other sectors of development, the partnership indirectly enhances livelihoods and household stability.
Integrating climate adaptation into rural economies
Cassava is climate tolerant and will therefore be a strategic crop in combating food insecurity due to unpredictable weather. Planting of drought-resistant varieties and educating women about water-saving methods like mulching and intercropping will make sure that women farmers are able to maintain their yield in changing weather conditions.
The UN Women-IOFS program also promotes sustainability by incorporating climate-resilience in its training and extension services. These measures will enable women to not only overcome the environmental pressures but also play their part in national climate adaptation programs.
Policy alignment and multilateral governance
The alliance promotes development of policy frameworks that legally acknowledge the role of women and other sex related limitations. This will entail collaboration with the governments of different countries to incorporate women’s needs in the agricultural policy, land tenure reform strategies, and rural development strategies.
In other countries, such as Tanzania and Senegal, ministries of agriculture started to modify their extension services in order to reach more women and to focus on funding female-led cooperatives. These institutional reforms have been backed by data collection in which it is disaggregated by gender so that more targeted and effective interventions can be achieved.
Expanding regional collaboration for impact
The partnership fosters harmonization of policies and knowledge exchange in the region through organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Workshops across the border and technical committees allow the stakeholders to learn lessons on successful pilots, access finance, and match strategies with food security frameworks beyond the continent like the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
The multilateral aspect improves scalability and provides African countries with a chance to organize cassava development plans and goals of collaboration in gender equity.
The rise in leadership of women in the cassava value chain of Africa is not only the agricultural development, but also a symbolic sign of structural change, in terms of food systems, gender roles, and economic inclusion. The partnership of UN Women-IOFS demonstrates that specific investment in skills, technology, finance, and policy change could empower millions of rural women. Since Africa is poised to resilience both economically and ecologically on a long-term basis, empowering women through sustainable cassava value chains can be one of the pillars of inclusive development.
