Across Africa, food systems both reflect and reinforce unequal power: who owns land, who controls income, who decides what is grown and sold, and who eats first when food is scarce. A gender-just food system reverses these patterns. It ensures that women, men, girls, and gender-diverse people have equal rights, resources, and decision-making power across production, markets, and households. It recognizes and fairly compensates all forms of labour, transforms harmful norms, prevents gender-based violence, and uplifts diverse local knowledge. It also builds climate resilience that accounts for the heavier burdens women and gender minorities often face.

This is urgent because the inequities are systemic and longstanding. Precolonial hierarchies have often positioned women as principal food producers with limited control over land and surplus. Colonial regimes codified male land ownership, prioritized cash crops, and focused extension services on men. Postcolonial modernization entrenched male advantages in technology, markets, and capital, elevating large-scale farming and male-dominated infrastructure. Today, patriarchal norms and customary land tenure continue to privilege men through male-line inheritance and decision-making, while gendered value chains concentrate women in lower-profit nodes.

The consequences are measurable. Women have less access to land, credit, inputs, and irrigation. Their work is concentrated in subsistence production and post-harvest processing. Wage gaps persist and women are routinely excluded from key decisions in households, cooperatives, and communities. Sexual harassment and exploitation in markets limit participation and mobility. The physical and mental load of care burdens reduces time for skill acquisition and income-earning work, which in turn exacerbates nutritional inequities. Policies often lack the gender focus needed to correct these structural gaps.

Engaging Men as Co-Creators of Change

Evidence from programs across the continent shows that engaging men can accelerate progress toward gender-just food systems when this engagement is intentional, reflective, and grounded in local realities. Rather than treating men only as potential obstacles, many initiatives increasingly work with men as partners in transformation—within households, communities, and institutions.

Several approaches have proven effective.

Framing equality as a shared benefit. Framing equality as a path to stronger families and communities—rather than as a loss for men—helps reduce resistance and build alliances. Initiatives such as FAO’s Dimitra Clubs and other gender-transformative approaches in rural Africa demonstrate that when men are approached as allies, problem-solving becomes collective.

Addressing the “black box” of the household. Power dynamics over who speaks, who decides, and who eats are often forged at home. Couples’ dialogues, joint goal setting, budgeting, and workload analysis help make invisible norms visible and negotiable. CARE’s collective household visioning and shared budgeting show that when couples rebalance tasks and align goals, both equity and productivity improve.

Showing tangible gains to men. Demonstrating reduced stress, better time management, higher yields and incomes, and healthier families lowers backlash. In Zambia, community efforts such as the Green Living Movement have shown that more equitable household practices can pay off for everyone.

Engaging masculinities directly. Programs that ignore masculinity norms risk recruiting men to “help” on men’s terms, leaving hierarchies intact. Reflective approaches such as the GREAT initiative’s use of feminist pedagogy with researchers and practitioners invite men to question power and see how equality can enhance their own lives.

Making participation real, not top-down. One-way sensitization has limited impact. Participatory and locally grounded approaches—such as peer learning, facilitated community dialogues, and iterative reflection—help build ownership and allow initiatives to adapt to local contexts.

Tailoring engagement to different roles. Men occupy diverse roles within food systems: husbands, youth, traders, elders, cooperative leaders, and wage labourers. Effective strategies therefore match entry points to roles across production, processing, logistics, retail, and governance, taking into account age, class, livelihood, and ethnicity.

Working inside institutions as well as communities. Extension services, cooperatives, NGOs, and research institutes shape incentives and practices across food systems. Sustained capacity development—such as GREAT’s training of agricultural researchers—helps embed gender responsiveness in institutional mandates, tools, and performance systems.

Measuring what truly changes. Many initiatives track attitudes or women’s participation without linking these changes to shifts in control over land, income, or decision-making power. Stronger theories of change and better indicators are needed to connect shifts in norms with tangible outcomes across the food system.

The Payoffs of Gender-Just Food Systems

Gender-just food systems are more productive, resilient, and fair. When women have equal access to land, inputs, credit, information, and markets—and an equal voice in decision-making—yields rise, household diets improve, and incomes grow. One example is the Network of Men Committed to Gender Equality (RHEEG) in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Côte d’Ivoire. Seeds of this initiative were sown during training sessions encouraging men and boys to commit to gender equality.

The network now supports men’s mental wellbeing, food and nutritional security, and promotes nutritional autonomy through agri-food processing initiatives. As similar efforts expand to more countries, families benefit from shared decision-making, reduced care burdens, and improved household wellbeing. Inclusive access to resources and adaptation choices also strengthens resilience in the face of climate shocks.

Men themselves benefit through reduced household strain, more balanced workloads, improved relationships, and more stable livelihoods.

The Way Forward

Transforming food systems will require mobilizing men as co-beneficiaries and co-architects of change—at home, in markets, and inside institutions. Interventions should:

• Frame equality as a collective gain and anchor work at the household level

• Pair reflective work on masculinities with practical, visible benefits

• Use participatory, context-specific methods tailored to different roles

• Institutionalize gender responsiveness in extension services, research, and cooperatives

• Track concrete shifts in resources, decision-making power, and safety, not only attitudes

If done well, engaging men can move efforts beyond awareness toward transformation—rebalancing power relations, rewarding all forms of labour, and unlocking more sustainable agriculture, stronger economies, and healthier communities.

Contact

Suzan Gopuk, Email: Suzan.gopuk@giz.de