Kenya: ‘Women Are Not Afraid of Change’ – Why Africa’s Food Security Depends on Who Bears the Risk

For Africa’s smallholder farmers, the next climate shock will not only test what they grow, but whether they have the resources to withstand a failed season.

As countries such as Kenya prepare for the possibility of another major El Niño, attention is turning to drought-resistant crops, water-harvesting techniques, weather information, and other tools that can help farmers adapt. But Dr Eileen Nchanji, Gender and Social Inclusion Expert at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, argues that one crucial part of the resilience equation is often overlooked: whether women farmers can afford to take the risks that come with innovation.

“Women are not ‘afraid of change,'” she said. “They simply face higher risks if an investment fails.”

Women are already at the heart of Africa’s food systems, making up an estimated 40 to 50% of the agricultural workforce across sub-Saharan Africa. They plant, weed and harvest crops, select and preserve seed, process food and sell produce in local markets. They also carry much of the responsibility for ensuring their families have enough nutritious food.

Yet many women farm with less access to land, finance, technology, information, and markets than men.

Nchanji said that building climate-resilient food systems therefore requires more than distributing better seeds or introducing new technologies. It means building systems around women farmers that account for the risks they face – bringing together land rights, finance, appropriate tools, information, markets and a meaningful voice in decisions about how farms and household resources are managed.

The payoff, she argued, is bigger than a better harvest.

It is the possibility of food systems that are better equipped to withstand the next drought, flood or El Niño, while giving women greater control over the livelihoods and communities they help sustain.

“Women are the backbone of African agriculture,” she said. “When women earn money and have a voice, they invest it right back into food, education, and healthcare for their families.”

Women don’t just grow food; they are the ones who ensure it reaches the table as something nutritious and varied, making them the de facto guardians of household nutrition across the continent.

But that role comes at a cost.

Nchanji described a “triple burden” that defines daily life for many women farmers: balancing fieldwork with unpaid childcare and domestic labour like cooking and fetching water. This leaves women with less time to rest, learn new techniques, access services, run businesses, or recover when a harvest fails.

Unequal access to land compounds the problem.

In many communities, women are far less likely to own or control the land they farm, which shuts them out of loans and long-term investment. Tools and technologies, from machinery to mobile advisory apps, are often designed with men, making them difficult for women to use. Even when women succeed in producing commercially valuable crops, control over the resulting income can shift away from them, even when they provide much of the production labour.

In other words, said Nchanji, when a woman’s crop becomes profitable, men often take over the sale of the crops and the lion’s share of the proceeds.

Climate change adds another layer of risk.

“Droughts, floods, extreme heat and other impacts can affect women and men differently,” she said, “because access to land, finance, climate information, labour, technologies, and household decision-making is unequal.”

In Kenya, concerns about a potentially strong El Niño are once again putting climate preparedness in the spotlight.

The scale of the threat is becoming clearer as climate forecasts point to a potentially powerful El Niño later this year, a warning that makes the question of who is best equipped to withstand extreme weather even more urgent.

The United Nations has warned of the potential for one of the strongest El Niño events on record, with Kenya and other countries in East Africa bracing for potentially heavy rainfall. The heavy rains could affect millions of people across the region and force up to 500,000 people from their homes. The World Meteorological Organization said that El Niño is expected to strengthen significantly in the coming months and is highly likely to remain in place until February 2027. The phenomenon is expected to reach its peak towards the end of 2026; its influence on weather conditions could continue into the following year.

El Niño is a naturally occurring climate pattern characterised by above-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. It typically occurs every two to seven years and can last for months, disrupting normal weather patterns around the world. Some areas experience more rain and flooding than usual, while others face prolonged dry spells.

The 2015-2016 El Niño remains the strongest on record and contributed to making 2016 the hottest year globally at the time. East Africa experienced severe flooding and major agricultural losses. The event also contributed to widespread coral bleaching around the world.

In Kenya, the national meteorological service has predicted above-average rainfall for October to December. The National Disaster Operations Center said it was preparing for a potentially severe scenario, with up to 1.5 million people possibly affected and as many as 500,000 displaced.

Authorities are identifying the most vulnerable communities and infrastructure and working to improve preparedness, emergency planning and public awareness. The government is also working on protecting essential services that could be affected by flooding and severe weather, such as water systems, electricity infrastructure and telecommunications networks. Farmers and livestock keepers are also likely to be at risk from flooding, waterlogging, crop damage, livestock losses and disruption to transport and markets.

For smallholder farmers, the question is therefore not simply whether the rains will come, but whether they will have the resources to withstand what comes with them.

Nchanji advised farmers that preparing now is practical and immediate. She said that farmers can reduce some of these risks by digging terraces, ridges, and furrows early, which can prevent soil erosion while capturing rainwater for the drier months that typically follow. She added that planting certified drought- and flood-tolerant seed varieties that mature early gives crops a better chance against both extremes.

Farmers need to follow weather forecasts alongside agricultural advice from institutions such as the Kenya Meteorological Department, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization and county extension services.

But even the most promising agricultural innovation can fall short if the systems around farmers remain unequal.

She said that the biggest policy failure is assuming that any new farming technology automatically helps everyone, while still treating “the farmer” as a man who owns land. Because banks and government subsidy programs still demand title deeds, most women are locked out simply because the land is not in their name.

According to Nchanji, this needs to change.

Financial institutions need to stop treating land titles as the only requirement for loans and farm subsidies, and start recognising alternatives like mobile money histories or group savings records. Programs need to be built with women’s participation from the start to ensure they actually control the tools and the money made. In addition, governments must enforce laws that protect women’s rights to own and inherit property.

She said that this is what makes a gender-transformative approach different from simply giving women access to the latest agricultural technology.

Bundling solutions, not just seeds

Much of Nchanji’s recent work centres on what she calls “gender-transformative socio-technical innovation bundles,” or GT-STIBs. In simple terms, she said, it means giving farmers a combination of innovations that address both the technical, technological and social constraints affecting farming.

She described a gender-transformative socio-technical innovation bundle as an approach that combines agricultural technologies with practical skills and changes in household decision-making. Rather than providing farmers with a single intervention, the model can bring together drought-resilient seeds, irrigation equipment and digital advisory tools with training on farming practices, soil and water conservation and financial management.

The approach also recognises that the success of an agricultural technology depends on the wider conditions in which farmers operate, including access to finance, information, labour and markets, as well as who has a say in how resources and income are used. For women, this can mean addressing household gender roles alongside the technical barriers they face.

“Women rarely fail simply because good seeds do not exist. They fail because systems are disconnected,” she said. “A great seed does no good if a woman cannot get credit to buy it, has no say in where to plant it, and cannot reach the market to sell it.”

A bundle typically combines physical tools like drought-resilient seed, irrigation kits, and mobile apps, along with practical training in better farming and financial management. Because agricultural constraints are often interconnected, a single solution is never enough on its own.

“If you give a farmer drought-tolerant seed but no guidance on how to conserve soil water, the crop can still dry up. If you give them high yields without linking them to markets, middlemen will take all their profits,” she said.

Nchanji said that women farmers are not “afraid of change.” Rather, they often face greater risks when an agricultural investment fails, particularly when they have fewer financial resources and limited control over productive assets. Follow-up work on GT-STIBs in Kenya suggests that farmers continue to use combinations of innovations rather than relying on isolated interventions. By bringing together seeds, training, credit and family support, the approach can reduce the risks associated with adopting new technologies while strengthening farmers’ resilience.

For example, she said, in East African trials, bundling pushed women’s adoption of improved seeds from 42% to over 90%. But Nchanji cautioned that not every farmer needs the same bundle. Rather, farmers select what to bundle based on the complementary constraints that need to be addressed together.

Resilience starts inside the household

The impact of the programme extended beyond higher crop yields. Crop productivity has risen by up to 80% in programme communities. Nchanji pointed to changes in how households made decisions about farming, money and resources.

She said that husbands and wives increasingly began making decisions together, including what to plant, how to use the land, and how to manage household savings. Women also gained a greater voice in how farming income was spent, including on school fees, food and healthcare. The changes also helped ease tensions around household finances, as farming increasingly became a shared family enterprise.

Women who had previously been viewed largely as unpaid farm labourers became more visible as knowledgeable farmers and leaders within their communities.

Nchanji said that when women have equal access to climate forecasts and farming inputs, crop yields rise by 38 to 49%, families are better protected from catastrophic losses during extreme weather, and communities recover faster because women aren’t forced to sell off livestock or tools just to get through a bad season.

Child nutrition improves too, she added, “because women prioritize feeding their families… healthy, diverse foods.”

These changes at the household level point to a broader lesson: resilience is not only about surviving climate shocks, but about giving women more ways to manage risk and earn from their work.

One of the most important considerations is time. Women already carry significant farming, childcare and domestic responsibilities, meaning that new technologies and practices need to reduce, rather than add to, their workload. Tools that reduce the physical demands of farming can therefore be as important as improvements in crop productivity. She also pointed to the importance of group action. Women achieve far more when they unite in cooperatives to buy inputs together, negotiate fair prices, and avoid being exploited by middlemen.

Traditional knowledge also has a role to play alongside scientific innovation.

Women farmers often have a deep understanding of local environmental conditions. Nchanji said that combining that knowledge with scientific information, including modern weather forecasts, can strengthen the adoption of new practices.

She said that adding value to agricultural products can provide another layer of protection against financial shocks. Instead of selling crops only in their raw form, farmers can process produce into products such as dried vegetables, flour, or packaged beans, potentially creating income opportunities beyond the immediate harvest and reducing their exposure to fluctuations in commodity prices.

It is built through systems that allow farmers to access the right tools, information, finance, and markets. This also gives women greater control over the decisions that shape their livelihoods.

Putting women at the centre

As the International Year of the Woman Farmer brings renewed attention to women’s contribution to agriculture, Nchanji said that governments need to move beyond recognition and invest in structural change.

Governments, she said, must scale up bundled solutions (combining seeds, tools, and social training) across national and county extension programs, and track agricultural data specifically by gender. Financial institutions must remove land titles as mandatory collateral for loans and offer credit based on mobile money transactions and group savings, alongside climate insurance. Agricultural organizations must design every tool and program with women from the very beginning, ensuring that men and boys are also engaged as supportive allies at home.

She pointed to Makueni, an arid and semi-arid county in Kenya where drought-tolerant crops, water-harvesting practices, and structured family dialogue sessions were introduced together.

“Makueni’s experience shows why climate resilience cannot be reduced to a single technology. Real change is entirely possible when women are supported with the right combination of tools. In an arid and semi-arid area like Makueni, technical options need to be combined with access to information, markets, and finance, and we need to pay attention to who makes decisions and how responsibilities and benefits are shared within households.

“By pairing drought-tolerant crops with water-harvesting practices and family dialogue sessions, farmers achieved an 80% jump in crop yields. Their resilience scores rose dramatically, proving that they could anticipate dry spells and protect their harvest.

“It shows that drought does not have to mean hunger and emergency food aid. When women are supported as leaders, dryland communities can become self-reliant and thrive.”