In 1993, when Bill and Melinda Gates first visited Africa, they were on a safari to enjoy the continent’s scenery of animals and savanna grassland – and they enjoyed it!

But what touched the couple were the people and their way of life.

Melinda Gates recalls seeing the collapse of a once bubbling market in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and the struggle of the local women in the open-air market.

“As I watched women walked in the market, there were barefoot, they often had a child on their back or one in the belly and they’ll have these huge piles of sticks…and it just led to series of questions – what is going on for these women? What is happening here?” she wondered.

Melinda Gates is fascinated by the ingenuity of the smallholder woman farmer and loves to share their experiences in agricultural practices and their determination to cater for the education, health and improved livelihood of their households.

Gates quest for the socio-economic empowerment of the rural woman farmer is passionately articulated whenever she talks about agricultural transformation in Africa.

For her, putting the rural woman farmer at the centre of an African Green Revolution remains the ultimate agenda of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We’re very well aware that she participates in the whole ecosystem that is outside of her two hectare farm, but anything you can do to affect her; to help her get her crops to markets, help her to feed her family; that is ultimately what we’re trying to achieve”, she said.

As co-Chair of the Foundation, Melinda has directed her energy towards the nonprofit world, steering the Foundation’s work which largely focuses on health, poverty, and development in Africa to lift the continent’s poor out of hunger and extreme poverty.

The Foundation works to help all people to lead healthy, productive lives, guided by the belief that every life has equal value.

Since inception, the Foundation has paid total grants of $23.46 billion in support of development works in more than 100 countries.

One of the largest recipients is the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which has accessed $264.5 million since 2006 to improve seeds and soil for African farmers.

AGRA works to ensure that smallholders – majority women - have what they need to succeed, including access to markets, information, financing, storage and transport, as well as policies that provide them with comprehensive support.

Melinda Gates is confident Africa can share in the inspirational lessons of the Green Revolutions in Asia and Latin America to lift many people out of poverty, but most importantly wants the woman to participate in the process.

Believing that people face multiple, interconnected challenges, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offers multiple, interconnected solutions.

Hence, Melinda Gates’ advocacy for family planning – and recently the Foundation rallied hundreds of partners to give 120 million additional women and girls access to contraceptives by 2020.

Her care about contraceptives is directly linked to women in agriculture.

At the recent African Green Revolution Forum in Arusha, Melinda said that “very often, the women I talk to about contraceptives make their living by farming. In fact, the majority of the farmers in the world are women: they want to bring every good thing to their children, and they can use healthier soils, better seeds, and more accessible markets to do just that”.

“The motivation is always the same: parents’ desire to give their children power over their lives. The specific interventions—whether they’re contraceptives or a meningitis vaccine or improved maize seeds—are a means to that end”, she added.

The wish of Melinda Gates is that when in 2013 Africa’s leaders mark the 50th anniversary of the Organization of African Unity (now African Union) and the 10th anniversary of the Maputo Declaration, they redeem their pledge to support farmers by spending 10 percent of their budgets on agriculture and achieve 6 percent growth in their agricultural productivity.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has made two long-term commitments to do its work successfully – “first, as I have tried to make clear, we are maniacal about starting with the needs of women farmers. It’s a philosophy, a mantra, and a promise. We will never stop thinking about how to do it better. Second, we will always seek help from partners who are close to farmers and their farms”, noted Gates.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh