Dzodzi Tsikata Quotes

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

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.

Africa is a continent of farmers, of small producers who do not have a vast production. Which doesn't mean that this is a bad strategy, because I believe that small-scale agriculture is promising and often undervalued. For example, Ghana has become a world leader in cocoa production based on small-scale agriculture. This should teach us that small farmers can produce successfully for the market.

Sustainable development cannot be achieved without addressing the structural inequalities that persist in our societies.

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.

Most importantly: we have to support women in agriculture because many times they are not the only ones producing food, even though they are involved in all the productive activities that ensure the survival of the entire family.

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.

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.

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.

Feminist don't only fight for their welfare but to make the entire society better, the only way to reduce the ill thoughts about feminism and it's goals is to encourage more young women to openly take part in the worthy cause.

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.