Road Infrastructure impactful on women empowerment in rural areas – Researchers
Road infrastructure played good impact on women empowerment,
household nutrition and gender equality in rural Nigeria.
This is the submission of researchers at the end of a validation workshop on the Impact of Road Infrastructure on Household Nutrition, Women Empowerment and Gender Equity in Rural Nigeria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the event held at the University of Ibadan, attracted researchers in agriculture, nutrition and other relevant fields.
According to Prof. Victor Okoruwa, the Principal Investigator of the programme, the validation workshop was organised “to interact with stakeholders on our findings from the field work.
“And to show them if what we found out are really true picture of what is happening on the field,” he said.
Okoruwa said that road infrastructure was vital to development of agriculture, thus make access to farmland, reducing the cost of transportation and increase the production and productivity of farmers, thereby make food more available at reduced cost.
He said that prioritisation of road infrastructure development create enabling environment for improved nutrition outcomes in rural settings.
Okoruwa said poor and non- existence of road infrastructure were widespread in the country, adding that this constrained the market functionality and market access of rural farmers, mostly women and worsening poverty levels.
“The consequences are that women’s inability to access markets worsen their economic empowerment as well as household nutrition and gender inequality,” he said.
However, several development projects such as Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) have provided rural roads, though, emperical studies, linking road infrastructure provision to gender equality, household nutrition and women empowerment were limited.
VCDP was initiated by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in 2013 in partnership with the Federal Government, but the programme stated fully in 2019.
The preliminary conclusion of the validation is that road infrastructure improves gender equality; women empowerment and women nutrition of rural households.
He called on policy makers to further enhance and do what they could do to allow women to be empowered more, so that food self sufficiency and food security could be guaranteed in the homes.
Okoruwa said that women have roles to play, adding, “they are ready to help men and the only way they can help is to empower them”.
The programme, sponsored by the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED), have findings presentation by Dr Ogheneruemu Obi-Egbedi, Dr Tolulope Jerumeh and Dr Oluwaseun Ariyo, all researchers from UI.(NAN)
