By Stephen Simon
Prof. Taibat Yusuf, an Agricultural Economist at Kwara State University (KWASU), has called for systemic reforms to Nigeria’s land inheritance laws and financing structures to empower women farmers, warning that national food security cannot be achieved while gender disparities persist in the sector.
Delivering KWASU’s 23rd Inaugural Lecture, titled “Empowering Women Farmers in Nigeria: Closing the Gender Gap for Agricultural Transformation and Food Security,” Prof. Yusuf highlighted that discriminatory customary land practices severely restrict women’s access to credit, farm inputs, and productive resources.
To dismantle these structural barriers, the scholar advocated for legal frameworks that guarantee women the right to own and inherit land regardless of marital status, alongside legal provisions for joint land ownership between married couples.
Addressing financial exclusion, the don urged banking institutions to introduce gender-inclusive microcredit schemes that eliminate land collateral requirements, expand rural digital banking, and tailor loan products to the operational realities of female smallholders.
Prof. Yusuf also called for targeted structural changes across the agricultural value chain, recommending:
Extension Services: Recruitment of more female extension officers, flexible training hours, and mobile advisory services delivered in local languages.
Labor & Infrastructure: Investment in mechanised processing equipment, rural electrification, potable water, and childcare facilities to reduce unpaid domestic burdens on female farmers.
Market Access & Post-Harvest: Expansion of contract farming schemes, cold-chain storage facilities, and transport networks to curtail post-harvest losses.
Eco-Friendly Farming: Mainstreaming sustainable inputs, specifically moringa-based bio-organic fertilizers, through cooperative production networks.
On governance, the don recommended mandatory gender-impact assessments for all agricultural policies, increased representation of women on agricultural boards, and dedicated budgetary lines for gender-responsive investments.
Prof. Yusuf noted that with roughly 140 million Nigerians living below the poverty line, eliminating the agricultural gender gap is no longer merely a fairness issue, but an urgent economic strategy necessary to transform the nation’s food production capacity.
