The African Union Campaign to confine the handheld hoe to the museum launched at the AU Summit in June 2015

The African Union  unveiled a statue dubbed ‘’Retiring the Hoe to the Museum’’, in the Burkina Faso town of Bobo Dioulasso to symbolically mark the continental agenda of promoting agriculture mechanization among women to improve food production.

“Retiring the Hoe to the Museum” in order words, means the hoe which has been a drudgery tool for agriculture production since medieval times should now be abandoned in Africa as a major farming tool for more effective means of agricultural production- mechanization.

The unveiling of the statue and launch of the campaign was a  follow up to the 2015 AU submit in South Africa, where the past AU Chairperson, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, proposed the campaign by symbolically presenting power tiller to each African Head of State and Government to emphasize the importance of removing the drudgery from agriculture, especially among women.