The girl child and agriculture

THE GIRL CHILD AND AGRICULTURE: How Investing In Rural Girls Can Aid In Community Development. 

train a boy and you’ve built a man,     train  a girl child and you’ve built up a nation                                                                                                           ~unknown

          Across the globe, only about 39% of the rural girl child gets to secondary school and about 45% of the rural boy child graduates from secondary school. It is alarming that even in the 21st century  many communities do not see the need for the education of the girl child.  In most communities especially in Africa, the girl child is given off early into marriage, hence her dreams of being educated, a career woman and a mighty force to reckon in the labour market is being curtailed if not truncated. 
     The percentage of poverty in rural communities between male and female is in the ratio of 2:5 showing that we have more poor females to males in the society.     
      One of the girl child most urgent need in Africa, some parts of Asia and Europe  is to be recognised for her intricate abilities and also her desire to serve her people. There is a 90% tendency of a girl child allocating her income/earnings to her family and only a 35% of a boy child doing same. This impact multiplies when millions of girls are empowered , creating compounding effects that can reshape an entire community’s economy and national fortune.  If the girl child is given the same opportuinities as her male counterparts e.g land, inputs, financing, governmental and non governmental aids etc, then they will be a high amount of increase in income and less poverty both in the rural and urban sector.   
    One ability that every female possess is the ability to multiply whatever is being given to her. If the rural girl child is allowed to have access to land and other aids for a successful farming system then the problem of poverty will be curtailed to a high extent.   
     It should be noted that agriculture can be both subsistent and commercial and it has been observed that even with some women’s  subsistent  farming, they feed their family and still sell some of the produce to  cater for the monetary need of the family, if such women are been empowered to own a commercial farm, the rate of poverty will reduce and an increase in revenue development will occur.   
   

THE GIRL CHILD AND AGRICULTURE

 Rural girls with little or no access to basic social  amenities including education should be empowered in the agricultural sector as this will not only be of benefit to her but the nation at large, the failure to train one girl child has a consequence of a long lineage of an untrained nation, women and girls are not simply victims, their loss is an entire country’s loss and their success  the glory of an entire nation, the global community can not advance without these key members. If as illiterates and totally dependent, they still try to give out ideas to their male counterparts which aids visible growth and development, how much more when educated and independent?
                            Written by:
                            Nsungo,  Precious Ndem
                             IAAG volunteer