With generous support from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the IWMF launched "Reporting on Agriculture and Women: Africa." The project energized the way African media cover one of the most important topics on the continent.

The IWMF helped African journalists to boost coverage of agriculture and rural development and increase women’s voices – both as journalists and as sources – in stories about agriculture

The IWMF is working on ground-breaking research on the status of women in the media worldwide. The new study, the Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media, will measure the career progress of women in the news media and use the results to help advocate for change.

The IWMF also tracks past studies on women in the news media, and will draw from this prior work in compiling the Global Report, which will be published in 2011.

4-Year Africa Project

With generous support from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the IWMF launched "Reporting on Agriculture and Women: Africa." The project is energizing the way African media cover one of the most important topics on the continent.
The IWMF is helping African journalists to boost coverage of agriculture and rural development and increase women’s voices – both as journalists and as sources – in stories about agriculture

Voices from the Field #3

In the article “Access to land for women vital,” Times of Zambia reporter Tiyese Sakala covers the challenges women face in regard to land ownership in Zambia.

“Many women in rural areas have been forced to concentrate on subsistence farming and only produce enough to feed their families,” Sakala wrote in the May 17 article.

In the article, Zambia Lands Minister Gladys Lundwe acknowledges a farmland shortage and said efforts are in place to identify available land. In the meantime, female produce sellers at Lusaka’s Soweto open-air market and other female farmers are working together to combat this problem by maximizing the potential of the land to which the do have access. For example, they share seeds and fertilizer, planting more and varying crops to reduce competition amongst themselves.

Sakala’s story originated from Reporting on Agriculture and Women: Africa field trips to farms. Prior to the RAWA project, reporters may not have known about this topic, but the field trip exposed them to farmers and the challenges they face. “The story is topical and touches an issue of land which affects women farmers in Zambia and the entire African continent,” wrote RAWA project trainer Susan Musukuma in an e-mail.

Sakala’s story provides more in-depth coverage than before the project, tackling not just the land issue but what individual women are doing to solve the problem.

In addition telling a story about rural development and women, the article meets another objective of the RAWA project by using several female farmers and a female government minister as sources.