Gender analysis of smallholder farmers' vulnerability to COVID-19 pandemic: Towards a resilient farming sector in Nigeria and South Africa

Lessons from previous pandemics showed that as a pandemic evolves, there is an urgent need to expand public health activities beyond direct clinical management to cover issues of food, nutrition and basic principles of management and optimisation of resource utilisation among various critical segments of the population. Therefore, this proposed study focuses on vulnerability of smallholder farmers, who are the custodians of food, fibre, firewood and fodder needed in both Nigeria and South Africa to ensure food and nutritional security as well as food sovereignty in this pandemic era and beyond. The overall goal of the proposal is to interrogate the varying degrees of vulnerability among the farmers by gender and articulate theoretical perspectives, policy-options and affirmative programmes for building resilience of the farmers against COVID-19 pandemic, thereby enabling the emergence of a resilient and egalitarian farming sector needed for sustainable food and nutritional security, food sovereignty as well as for the Sustainable Development Goal 2, which focuses on zero-hunger tolerance in Nigeria and South Africa. Expected Outputs 1. A comprehensive report on the pandemic-induced changes in farming practices, income sources and diets among the selected smallholder farmers. 2. A training manual on COVID-19 prevention measures, agronomic and livestock practices and resilience building strategies for the smallholder farmers. 3. Planning, implementation and evaluation of at least two local capacity building workshops 4. A pool of well-informed and COVID-19-resilient smallholder farmers 5. Publication of at least two info-graphs 6. Publication of at least three articles in journals 7. Publication of at least two policy-briefs