‘Women and girls get the short end of the straw’

Sabrina Dhowre Elba, actor and partner of British star Idris Elba, speaks to Louise Boyle from Cop27, as a UN goodwill ambassador pushing the importance of agriculture on climate

- Louise Boyle

Sabrina Dhowre Elba admits that it probably seems quite random” that she and her husband, the actor Idris Elba, have ended up championing the cause of rural, smallholder farmers. But she has her mother to thank for that.

“My mom grew up in a pastoral, rural community in Somalia,” the Canadian actor and model, who was appointed a United Nations goodwill ambassador in 2020, told The Independent. She always stressed the importance of giving back to Africa in some way, and what rural land and agriculture mean to rural people. She actually introduced us to IFAD.”

IFAD the International Fund for Agricultural Development might not garner the attention or funding of bigger UN agencies but it is a vital safety net for the world’s 500 million small farms. These largely unseen and unsung producers, mostly in developing countries, are responsible for putting one-third of the world’s food on the table.

In Africa and Asia, smallholder farmers produce a staggering 80 per cent of the food consumed. I’m actually surprised by how many people don’t know or haven’t heard of IFAD,” Elba said. Tt’s the world’s best-kept secret.” And despite punching far above their weight, small farms receive only 1.7 per cent of climate finance at a time when producers are buckling under extreme impacts driven by climate change. It’s a joke; it’s so unjust,” Elba said.

At Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, she joined the calls for rich countries to make good on their promise of 100bn-a-year in climate finance for developing nations, and for half of that amount to be channelled into adaptation. Smallholder farmers were not only the backbone of so much food production, but so many people’s livelihoods revolve around agriculture in one form or another”, Donal Brown, IFAD’s associate vice-president of programme management, told The Independent.