The YESALA network in its quest to unravel challenges in the agricultural economy explores through discussing research findings, news and mostly experiences by members making the YESALA network. This is in a quest to best understand development dynamics, in order to reach at enterprising and practical solutions that can be adopted openly by members in their respective twenty-five member countries across Africa. Recently our quest directed us in the direction of gender gaps in agriculture; with our discussion guided by an article by SciDev titled “Gender gaps in agriculture explored via social media.”

The key submission and conclusion according to a female agricultural extension practitioner and leader in Kenya, Fanice Wanjala:

The issue of gender inclusion is a problem that African governments need to address. For instance in extension the number of women employed in the field is very low, this is because most organizations are not willing to employ women claiming that extension is a tedious job requiring men but for us in that field have a different feeling. As a youth empowerment, forum we need to offer possible solutions and even share, experiences and case studies where women have been encouraged to participate in agribusiness value chains so as to encourage other women to take up the mantle.

By and through a parallel of discussion we found ourselves hung on the “How can we serve you?” question that we find commonly in the rural agricultural economy of Africa. The question was asked by and in the capacity of the leadership of the development organization AECkonsult to reach at practical deliverables or key asks for which interventions can be designed at community level.  The discussion took a key parallel pathway with one member Kativu delivering on a response focal on the influence of the how can we serve you question in the current status of the rural smallholder agricultural economy in Africa. Interestingly the how can we serve you mantra also needs to be closely interrogated in line with principles of sustainable development such as we find in co-shared value systems.  The following is Kativu’s submission:

The question of how women can serve us men is one that needs to be rethought and rephrased in this age and era. I have personally tried to run away from being a social scientist to focus more on agribusiness but despite strides towards business leadership, socially oriented leadership pulls me back to the grand challenge of society, inequality, hence my personal impulses and strides as a leader continue to be biased towards social fabrics in Africa, particularly those that hinder development. And in my quest as such, I have been in the battle against women servantism in society, (the how can we serve you paradigm).

This is the parasitic paradigm problem why we are where we are today, patriarchy feeds on the how can we serve you mantra like a parasite and the result at the end of the day is increasing inequality such as we see today in extreme disfavor of women in agriculture, who at the grassroots level find it (inequality) conventional in the name of servantile, submissive living, which in the extreme of my perceptions as an emerging social scientist I find equating to servitude. I take back to the article under discussion whence Lali mentions outright the oppression by men and did not earn any of her money. I am not a feminist no, but it aches the heart that such is still existent in Africa in the 21st century.

I like the realities that one fellow leader expresses in their recent submission, especially the part that we ought to fully interrogate this gender-oriented EMPOWERMENT and the internationalization aspect to of it (which is often in disguise capitalistic) and conclusively to the issue we still have big problems yet to be solved. And indeed the master problem comes back to identity, the male and the female or other prescriptions such as we find in regards to gender. Allow me to use also the same element of nature here, and thank you for pointing it out in such great clearance.

Nature is always showing us the way and we are sometimes too ignorant to listen. I hope this even if taken with a grain of salt it pushes one or two of my fellow male leaders in here to do something. In nature where we find vegetation of all sorts; to produce a fruit and therefore a seed, for the purpose of species perpetuation and flourishment, the pollen knows that without the ovaries to fertilize in a flower there will be no fruit, and the ovaries know that without pollen there will equally be no fruit; back to our basic science.

Now the anther which bears the pollen knows how to regulate from the nutrients directly supplied to it by nature, it knows to make sure that it matures pollen without greedy or taking advantage of the nutrients that should rightly be allocated to producing fertile ovaries so as to produce fruit. The pollen husks and anther are perhaps the first to receive energy in the form of sunshine, and they orient themselves in such a manner that they do not overshadow the ovaries from accessing the direct sunshine units they need to mature. The ovaries are the first to receive water and nutrients before the pollen and anther parts do, but they only take enough for themselves and ensure that the male parts of the flower access their fair share.

Mutuality and equality driven by beneficence is a principle as old as civilization, yet civilization has forgotten it, but nature has not. We need to look back to and upon nature to relearn the humanism that we have long lost. Our society in its patriarchal structure does not know how to or is reluctant to copy this otherwise simple principle from nature, we have so much pollen wealth and too little ovarian wealth, we are not learning enough from nature.

No matter how small the effort can be, if we stand out in our practice at grassroots level to say as young men we do not want to be served by the women in our society, that we do not want to be served by our fellow female youth, but we desire we desire to work together in mutuality, and act upon serving each other, it is in that society that we can see the greatest potential and capacity of everyone, especially the matriarchy which our patriarchal society has blindly sidelined and marginalized.

Recently we have been on a quest to establish leadership for InquAfrica, the women-oriented initiative of our organization.  Who better than a woman can lead a women-oriented grassroots initiative? And despite approaching outstanding female development practitioners in the field to head the initiative, we are yet to find a woman leader keen on leading the initiative at its very pinnacle in the absence of a male leader at that pinnacle. It boils back to this quest to serve. My first submission in that regard is that we ought to firstly interrogate fully the limits of serving at grassroots level and ensure it is not at the expense of socioeconomic marginalization of women, we ought to uplift women. In the story of Lali and many other women like her not fully benefiting from their toils and sweat, in line with the surrounding unchecked patriarchy, I bet it was a case of,

“I am the head of this household and all that is in it is mine, including you,” from the patriarchal figure and that is a ripe, true and ultimate seed of inequality.

My second submission is from a youth perspective, that us as youth are at possibly an equal disadvantage as women and we have a chance to rewrite the patriarchal paradigm of perpetual inequality for women. So in this case the only and best way they can serve us is by informing us and helping us, so that together and collectively we build a society socioeconomically sensitive to everyone, just like mother nature does, and free ourselves from marginalization such as have been brought on us. The pollen knows that without the ovaries, there is no next tree from the present tree, we need to move towards a systematic thinking of the same design.

My ultimate submission as a youth lastly is that we do not need to be served by women, the moment we feed into that servantile system where we perceive women as mere servants to our needs, the male youth are bound to feel and desire the superiority that fuels the fabric of patriarchy as we know it today, and the patriarchy we know today is unchecked, and the root of inequality. Our question as young people to women should be

“HOW CAN WE SERVE EACH OTHER, MUTUALLY?”