The Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP) and some NGOs are partnering with OXFAM to train women on agriculture and climate change.
Climate
Dr Michael David, Executive Director, GIFSEP, communicated this at a workshop on Female Food Heroes (Ogbonge), Women on Climate Change and Access to Climate Finance on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, in Abuja.
David said that the training was crucial because female farmers produced largely the food eaten in the country.
“Climate change is impacting on how they grow their food; looking at the food inflation the country is facing, we can attribute climate change to one of the causes of food inflation in the country.’’
He said that it was paramount to train the farmers to become change agents in their various communities and states so they could train others on how to build climate change resilience and simple climate adaptation techniques.
David said that the Federal Government needed to support the smallholder farmers with interventions that would proper bumper farming harvest in the country.
“If we must attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2030, then we must empower the small-scale farmers; we need to train more women not just the ‘Ogbonge’ women to help our country attain food sovereignty,’’ he said.
Similarly, Peggy Maimaji, Project Coordinator, Together Against Poverty, OXFAM, said that the project worked with female farmers to address issues that were salient to them especially the impacts of climate change on farming.
She assured that project would continue to address issues of access to land and finance saying that OXFAM collaborated to award no fewer than 12 women farmers every year since 2012 through the female food hero project.
Monica Maigari, one of the participants from Kaduna State, who had been awarded by OXFAM in 2014 for her performances, commended the NGOs for the training.
Maigari said she had learned how to mitigate climate change as well as to adapt to it.
By Abigael Joshua
