Women play a critical role in food security in this region of Africa by fulfilling their role as food providers.They make essential contributions to the agricultural and rural economies in all developing countries. There are 3 basic variants of household food production systems in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Women are responsible for the production of all or most food crops. In this variant, food plots are considered women's plots.
Men and women jointly cultivate staple food crops in fields controlled by male household heads. In this type, the male household head controls the output.
Men produce food, while women transform the agricultural products into food. This variant is mainly encountered where Islamic practices of female seclusion prevent women from engaging in fieldwork.
In many countries in Africa, there is a rigid division of labor by gender in agriculture. This division may be based on types of activities performed on the farm or types of crops grown by men and women. The division of labor is based on patriarchal norms that typically require women to care for the needs of the members of the household and men to bring money. Women are also expected to help their fathers and later on their husbands in the fields, which increases women's workload. Sometimes men help women in clearing their plots to prepare the land.
A farmer at the women's agricultural cooperative of Walikaly village in Siguiri Prefecture, Guinea
In regions where women and men work on separate plots growing different crops, women are usually engaged in subsistence farming to provide food to fulfill the needs of the members of the household, while men are engaged in the production of a different subsistence crop and/or cash or export crops. Since the early 21st century, this pattern has been prevalent in several Sub-Saharan African countries like Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, etc. This distinction can be explained as a result of gender norms that assign women with the responsibility of feeding the family and men with the responsibility of providing cash income
