AIWF is delighted to share that our valued Board Member Raghda Kurdi recently participated as a keynote speaker for the 8th Tokyo International Conference on African Development, ‘Unlocking the potential of a multistakeholder approach to a healthy food system’.
The empowerment of women in the rural economy, and the growing role of women in sustainable agriculture, are key advocacy tracks with which AIWF has been deeply engaged over the last few years. In her address, Raghda explored the importance of ensuring economic inclusion for women in sustainable agriculture and highlighted the need to empower women’s leadership in agribusiness and agritech, and to foster equitable, lasting transformation in global and MENA food systems through women’s innovation and entrepreneurship.
In her keynote, Raghda said: “For women entrepreneurs in agriculture, we need to strengthen capacity and skills and provide essential training, funding, and mentorship opportunities to help them start up, scale up and create the jobs that are so desperately needed in the region. In agricultural research, sciences, and policymaking, we need to empower the region’s many highly educated and qualified women to take on leadership roles where they can contribute to mainstreaming sustainable agriculture and reforming global food systems through a gender equality lens.”
AIWF extends our sincere appreciation to the International Fund for Agricultural Development for their kind invitation to the Arab International Women’s Forum to participate in this timely and important discussion. The event recording is available here: https://youtu.be/L5R08_F1OUg (Raghda Kurdi’s intervention is at 49:20).
