Reaching and empowering women with digital solutions in the agricultural last mile

A new report examines how to empower women in the agricultural last mile through digital solutions. It highlights barriers like social norms, resource access, and digital inclusion. Incentivizing D4Ag providers can enhance gender inclusivity, empowering women in leadership and decision-making roles to combat existing inequalities and prevent their exacerbation.

GSMA released a new report on how to reach and empower women with digital solutions in the agricultural last mile. The focus of the study is to question the poor participation of women in digitised agricultural value chains by identifying the main barriers for women in disseminate digital for agriculture (D4Ag) initiatives and identifying key best practices to increase women’s participation and empowerment. According to GSMA, there are three key challenges to women’s participation in the digitised agricultural value chains: 1) social norms, 2) lack of access to resources to fuel productivity and increase yields, and 3) barriers to digital inclusion that contribute to the mobile gender gap. ‘By incentivising and rewarding D4Ag providers, donors and impact investors can guide them towards gender-inclusive approaches that aim to improve women’s influence, leadership roles, and decision-making power, and promote sensitive and equal gender norms at all levels. Without this, gender inequalities are not only likely to remain, but become exacerbated.’