The Sharefair 2014 will promote technologies and innovations that support rural women smallholder farmers. Its substantive South-South component will bring together rural women innovators from around the region, and offer a platform for policymakers, academics, food producers, investors, technology innovators and others to interact with these women. The objective is to launch an inspiring fair for sharing and showcasing agricultural production and value addition innovations.
A series of activities will be carried out that will lead up to the Sharefair event in October 2014. For example, a Young Scientist Innovation Award will acknowledge promising students who are designing technologies that take into consideration the unique gender dimensions of rural agriculture, food security and nutrition. This Sharefair comes at an opportune time when there is a broad consensus around the need for investing in women farmers to guarantee their equal access to productive resources, technical knowledge and viable markets. This consensus will help boost attention to women as drivers of rural progress and feed into the 2015 reviews of the implementation of the MDGs and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action as well as the post-2015 development agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, 2014 is the International Year of Family Farming, and the African Union’s Year of Agriculture and Food Security.