FAO Country REP. Rallies Support for Women

Mrs Filippini handing in her credentials to Agriculture Minister, Mr Michael Katambo

The 2021 theme for International Women’s Day Theme is Women in Leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world. Coincidentally for FAO Zambia, the genesis of the COVID pandemic last year, brought for the organization, its first-ever female country representative in Zambia.

Mrs. Suze Percy Filippini took office as FAO Zambia Representative in July last year; taking over from Dr. George Okechi. She is an icon of women in science with an academic background as an agricultural engineer with a Master’s degree in agroforestry among other postgraduate degrees.

Her journey with the United Nations began in 1988 when

she was first employed as a volunteer at the Centre for Agriculture in Mexico. Fast-forward to 2004, her first relationship with FAO commenced but it was after years in other prestigious UN positions that Mrs. Filippini was appointed as FAO Representative to the Republic of Congo in 2015. Her love for what she does coupled with hard work has seen her make history in Zambia as the country’s first female FAO Country Representative.

 “I came from a family where education is a pillar. My father was a lawyer and my mother a teacher…the opportunities that came my way, helped me build step-by-step who I am today,” Mrs. Filippini explained

In 2020, she was appointed to Zambia in the same capacity and she is up for her new experience.

 “I am a visionary. I always have a clear vision about a task at hand – keeping the long term goals, short term goals and repercussions in mind,” Mrs. Filippini added.

This is one of her personal attributes that she believes has helped her become a leading women in her organization.

Against this background, she hopes to uplift women farmers as she heads FAO Zambia and she believes that as the world battles to ease the challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, this time is an opportunity to foster efforts towards women farmers.

“It is the appropriate moment to adopt more productive methods of growing food, to strengthen self-management, resilience and community-level food sovereignty; to provide women with training and resources on best practices for climatic, social and cultural conditions; and to strengthen communities to protect their environment,” she said.

“It is also time to provide market industry and skilled development to foster opportunities for women to strengthen their knowledge, networks and skills to empower them to be strong and successful agribusiness managers and partners,” she added.

As such, she disclosed that under her leadership, FAO Zambia will continue to partner with the Zambian government to empower women farmers by helping them increase their agricultural production.

FAO Zambia has been urging farmers to aggregate their bargaining power and the organization has been linking farmers to non-collateral finance for mechanization and agribusiness development.

“Specific emphasis is on women and especially those lead farmers that are female-headed houses,” Mrs. Filippini said.

The social media campaign theme for International Women’s Day is #ChoosetoChallenge which highlights the need for women to have equal opportunities to be included in decision-making and to flourish in their own right.

Mrs. Filippini is alive to this fact and she called on all stakeholders in development to work together to open up avenues for women to thrive.

“They [women] should take farming as a business – they should try to belong to a cooperative for better information from reliable sources…evidence shows that when women have opportunities the yields of their fields increase so does their incomes; nutrition is improved and livelihoods are more secured…so women are key players in the effort to end hunger and nutrition in the world including Zambia,” she said.

 As Zambia commemorated International Women’s Day and Youth day, respectively, the new FAO Zambia Country acknowledged the plight of women and youth in agriculture and reassured them of FAO’s commitment to enabling their access to more opportunities.

“I would to take this opportunity to [say] that if women farmers had the same access to resources as men farmers, they could bring 1 to 150 million people out of hunger. Research from the FAO demonstrates that gender equality opens doors for entire communities to improve nutrition security as well social and economic wellbeing,” Mrs Filippini said.