Meet the women using digital tools to build successful businesses and stronger communities.

Inclusive access to digital technologies and education is crucial to reducing gender inequalities and empowering rural women and girls – that was the message from three United Nations’ food and agriculture agencies as they marked International Women’s Day 2023.

Many rural women are excluded from digital services. What is causing the digital divide and what can we do to end it?

In Pakistan and Bangladesh women are harnessing technology to connect to the world and build a business, one click at a time.

Le FIDA et le Conseil national de concertation et de coopération des ruraux (CNCR) du Sénégal, viennent de signer un Accord de don pour améliorer les revenus des femmes et des jeunes entrepreneurs avicoles villageois ayant subi les conséquences des mesures restrictives prises pour faire face à la pandémie de Covid19.

In Ethiopia, community driven development puts small-scale farmers in charge of identifying what they need to prosper and how development funding should be used.

In rural Tunisia women are breaking free of gender norms and building successful businesses to provide for their families.

As we near the end of 2022, IFAD looks back on some of the themes that defined a year of dramatic change.

In rural Rwanda, solar-powered irrigation gives women farmers a sustainable alternative to time-consuming and expensive manual and diesel-powered systems.

Violence against women is one of the greatest barriers to sustainable development. On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, let's reaffirm commitments to eliminate and prevent gender-based violence.  

Small-scale farmers hold the key to feeding the world, its important for them to trust and invest in different types of irrigation systems.

Even when a world without poverty seems out of reach, here’s how IFAD continues to work in developing countries, amplifying the voices of rural people and integrating them into value chains, so they can earn and save, while feeding the world and conserving the natural environment.

There is no solution to climate change without rural women. It’s time to invest in them. It’s time to let them lead the way.

As the world faces a myriad of crises, experts fear that the progress rural women and girls have worked so hard for may be reversed. Here is how IFAD is working to prevent this.

Climate change, commercial agribusiness, and societal norms threaten small-scale farmers’ way of life in a small village in Sudan. A women’s savings and credit group is changing this.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s drylands – that is, the areas where more water is lost through evaporation than gained through rainfall – are facing widespread degradation. There are many factors causing this, but one of the most prominent is the use of agricultural practices that aren’t adapted to the land, such as overgrazing and intensive agriculture.

When Fatima-Zohra first arrived in her new home, a rural village in the Moroccan highlands, she discovered the local women didn’t have many job opportunities. But they were enthusiastic about the idea of going into business for themselves – and so Fatima-Zohra got to work.

The Vice President of IFAD, Dominik Ziller, will meet with Edouard Ngirente, Prime Minister of the Republic of Rwanda, as well as other high-level government officials during a visit starting 9 May.

This episode is all about closing the social justice gap in rural communities and developing countries.

Sustainable development can only be achieved with the contributions of rural women, yet they face many challenges. Let’s meet three women who have transformed their lives with the help of the JP RWEE initiative.