Dzodzi Tsikata Quotes

State's lack of attention to inequality and oriented petriachal rule as an underpinning viable that requires remedial action to provoke viable state society relations.

For a long period of time, I paid attention to gender inequalities. Many governments over the years have made efforts to address the inequality agenda with some success. In the anticolonial struggle in Ghana, women were very active.

Women are forgotten individuals with disproportionate level of income due to poverty and deprivation.

It was an important initiative because it opened up space for women to participate in public life. In the 60s there were many affirmative initiatives to ensure that women were represented in Parliament.

There are no policies that consider women as farmers. Then women are left aside and a cycle of disadvantages is perpetuated. It is not an economic question, but a matter of citizenship and rights. Anyone who declares themselves feminist cannot fail to recognize the connection between the rights of women and the right to the land.

I believe that the land is connected with many fights. The main reason is that we are an agrarian country and the land is a crucial resource. For us, the land is identity, the land where we live is part of who we are. They may have political control.

The struggle for land is essentially feminist.

However, some of these policies were very limited because there was talk of gender inequality, but women's rights affected many interconnected spheres that could not be separated. If one focuses solely on one aspect and ignores the rest, the rights of women will not be concreted.

Therefore, there are many complicated issues that we have to face to ensure food sovereignty. The first step is to guarantee the access of small producers to the ground for their own production, on the ground for the market. Secondly, we have to guarantee the questions surrounding the land posession. Some groups of farmers, especially women, cannot independently acquire land for agriculture.

There are many interesting initiatives being developed. There is a movement in several African countries to combat land grabbing. In many countries, there is a recovery of lands that were appropriated on a large scale. They are sabotaging activities, rejecting work and even sometimes destroying harvests. This is related to the idea that the government is not paying attention to the means of subsistence of these people. So they have to, basically, take care of themselves.

Women's rights affect many interconnected spheres that cannot be separated. If one focuses only on one aspect and ignores the rest, women's rights are not realized.

I believe there is a reason when we say that agriculture is increasing, but some of the most basic food security questions have not been addressed. In a country like Ghana, there are common illnesses related to food shortages and some people, at certain times of the year, do not have access to food. This is a very serious problem, particularly for children and women.

We must center the voices and experiences of marginalized communities in our quest for social justice.

There is, for example, no system that allows women to be registered on land. But if we only do this, without paying due attention to credit and technology considerations, women will have rights to the land only nominally, but will not have them substantially. Therefore, it is very important to see that it is not just a punctual act, but a series of interconnected questions.

But there is the mistake of deciding that it is not necessary to produce [other things] because, if you produce raw materials for export, you can earn enough money to buy food. So many farmers are not encouraged to continue producing and are not investigating how to produce, store, process and improve food security. Agriculture focuses on commodities.