Young Arab women studying agriculture will be offered a development programme that will hopefully enable them to improve the region’s food security.
Tamkeen, also known as the Young Arab Women Scientists Leadership programme, will focus on mentoring women who are studying agriculture at university to deal with challenges faced by female farmers.
It was developed by Dubai’s International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture.
The female labour force in Middle East agriculture grew from 34 per cent in 1995 to almost 45 per cent in 2011.
The programme is in a six-month design phase. Countries involved include the UAE, Oman, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
"A big part of the centre is working on issues of food and water security in the region and these two topics are huge challenges," said Rana Askoul, Tamkeen’s lead consultant.
The centre plans to conduct focus groups in the UAE, Jordan and Morocco in the coming weeks to find out the challenges facing women. It is also working with universities to assess the skills taught to students.
"Based on these results, we’ll be bringing in a team to design the programme for young Arab women," said Seta Tutundjian, a director at the centre.
"We will pilot this programme for them to go through and see what their feedback is, and tweak it to meet their expectations before launching into implementation phase by spring-summer 2017." (The National)
PHOTO: Dr. Henda Al Mahmoudi, a plant biologist at the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture.
CREDIT: Victor Besa for The National.