ABSTRACT
As part of the Voices from African Women initiative, gender networking was undertaken with girls and women in rural Africa on issues relevant to gender and agriculture. I wish to express my appreciation to all the communities, especially the women who took time from their busy schedules to participate in the village meetings. I particularly thank them for their patience in answering all my questions. I extend my thanks also to the village heads for giving me the permission to hold meetings in their villages on short notice. Under the Voices initiative, the task was to establish networking in Nigeria in the field of agriculture at the village level in line with the African Platform for Action and the Beijing Platform for action. The emphasis was on identifying existing opportunities and constraints in agriculture, gender and development in Nigeria and raising awareness of these issues. The central question is how village communities see the current disparities in gender roles and where they think the opportun ities are fo r b ridging the gap tow ards equality. To ach ieve this, networking materials developed by the Technical Department of the World Bank in Washington (Appendix 1) were selected as focal points for discussion with village communities, extensionists, local experts and industrialists.
