Background: This study investigates the challenges faced by women in livestock production across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by analysing online discourse from social media platforms.

Methods: Using social media listening (SML) tools and Large Language Model (LLM)-assisted analysis, we processed approximately 84,000 posts, with 8,048 posts retained after relevancy filtering.

Results: Four principal themes emerged: the marginalisation of women’s roles in livestock farming; structural barriers such as limited access to resources and persistent gender inequalities; disease management and veterinary service challenges; and the impact of training and empowerment initiatives. Key findings highlight that women encounter significant financial barriers, including exclusion from traditional credit systems, while emerging fintech solutions offer potential to address funding gaps. Digital divides further restrict women’s access to information and services, with online narratives predominantly representing English-speaking regions with better internet connectivity, such as Nigeria and Kenya, and underrepresenting francophone and conflict-affected areas. Despite these obstacles, women demonstrate strong community-based animal health knowledge and effective farm management when structural barriers are reduced. The study also identifies grassroots adaptation strategies to climate change that are often absent from formal reports. Our methodology enabled the identification of informal disease management practices and peer-to-peer knowledge exchange, complementing traditional research approaches.

Conclusions: These insights underscore urgent policy priorities, including targeted interventions to improve women’s access to veterinary services, finance, digital technology, and training. Success stories from community-based training and technology-enabled finance access provide promising models for scaling effective interventions. This scalable and cost-effective methodology offers potential for broader agricultural research applications, though digital access disparities necessitate multilingual approaches and complementary data sources.