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Integrating empowerment in the Dairy Goat and Root Crop Production project in Tanzania

Alessandra Galiè

Livestock and Fish Gender Working Group Workshop and Planning Meeting

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 October 2013

Overview of presentation

• Project overview

• Empowerment in the project proposal

• Next steps: integrating an empowerment

framework and pathway in the project

Project overview

Title: Integrating Dairy Goat and Root Crop Production for Increasing Food, Nutrition and Income Security of Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania

Partners: Sokoine University, Tanzania; University of Alberta, Canada

Involved: 120 households (19FHH); 49 women and 61 men; 4 villages

Objectives: Improve nutrition and income security

Years: 2011-2014

Funders: IDRC, CIDA

Impact pathway

Project villages

Kunke

Wami Luhindo

MasinyetiIhanda

Gender and empowerment in the project

Project objectives (among others):– To analyse impacts (productivity, environmental, gender and

empowerment, food security and nutrition) of integrating improved goat breeds with sweet-potatoes and cassava into an agro-pastoral farming system

Project outcomes (among others): – Increased ability of women to independently participate in various

stages of the value chains;

– More equitable social relationships between men and women involved in the goat and root crop value chains

Gender strategy and activitiesStrategy: gender analysis to assess current situation; integration of

gender in all project activities and evaluation

Activities:

• Capacity building of staff in gender analysis

• Community trainings on gender-equity

• Inclusion of women in breeding, market, animal health

• Provision of assets to women (joint ownership)

• Support women’s special interest groups

• Strategies to involve very poor households and youth

Goat houses

Cassava and sweet potato fields

Fieldwork in Wami Luhindo

Findings from mid-term review

• Introduction of goats changed the gender-based organisation of labour

• Decision-making about goats and milk is mostly with men

• Farmers have limited involvement in the intervention

• Gender trainings effective in raising awareness of gender-based labour contribution

• Gender equity as a key emergent property of system

• Strategy does not explain why empowerment

• Strategy does not address how to enhance empowerment

Recommendations and way forward

Recommendations:

Research into development pathways

Gender empowerment framework

Way forward:

• Focus on empowerment pathway

• Methodology + methods to integrate empowerment

• Proposal writing and fund raising

Why empowerment in AR4D

Empowerment is considered a means for farmers to:

• Better participate in research

• Voice their needs and benefit from AR4D

• Safeguard their interests and livelihoods

• Achieve gender equity

Sources: Almekinders 2006; De Schutter 2009; Song 2010

Methodology: from empowerment framework to pathway

Empowerment conceptual framework:– What is empowerment?

Empowerment pathway:– How do we translate empowerment framework

into local realities to achieve equity of development? (i.e. How do we enhance empowerment)

Develop an empowerment framework

Defining empowerment:• What do we mean with empowerment?• Who decides which gender relations are ‘desirable’?

Empowerment in the literature (Kabeer 2010; Sen 1990 ):

• Change in power relations

• Domination by individuals over chance and circumstances

• Capability to negotiate, influence, hold institutions accountable

• A means to self-determination

Empowerment according to whom:• What does it mean to different farmers?

Methodology and tools to define an empowerment framework

Methodology: Participatory assessment of women’s

and men’s vision of their empowerment and

development goals in 10 years and hindrances to

achieving them

Tools:

• Single-sex focus groups discussions

• Rich pictures of future scenarios

Methodology and tools to develop an empowerment pathway

Methodology:

• Participatory assessment of strengths, opportunities and changes needed to achieve the empowerment and development goals

• Theory of change developed

• Definition of key indicators to monitor progress towards the goals

• Integration of indicators in MEL through mixed methods

• Repeat interviews with selected methods to assess change over time

• Feedback-loops to change project activities and approaches

Tools:

• Semi-structured interviews: SWOT analysis, Sustainable Livelihood Framework, Network Maps + other tools appropriate to indicators

• Participatory Impact Pathway Analysis

Sources: Alvarez et al 2008; Jacobs 2010

Empowerment framework and pathway Gender analysis

Participatory ML&E

, Gender Strategy p.11

Integrating the empowerment framework and pathway into the project

Key issues and questions

• Can gender analysis alone contribute to achieving

empowerment and gender equity?

• Who decides what are desirable gender relations?

• How do we accommodate alternative development paths?

• Where is empowerment in the research-to-development

continuum?

• Is a non-participatory project intrinsically disempowering?

Bibliography

• Almekinders, C. and J. Hardon, eds. 2006 Bringing Farmers Back into Breeding: Experiences with Participatory Plant Breeding (Wageningen: Agromisa Foundation).

• Alvarez, B. et al. 2008. Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis: A practical method for project planning and evaluation, ILAC Brief No. 17. The ILAC Initiative, Bioversity.

• De Schutter, O. 2009, “Seed Policies and the Right to Food: Enhancing Agrobiodiversity and Encouraging Innovation,” UN General Assembly, vol. 42473.

• Hellin, J. et al. 2007. Increasing the Impacts of Participatory Research. Experimental Agriculture, 44(01), pp. 81–95.

• Jacobs, A. 2010: Creating the missing feed-back loop, IDS Bulletin 41, 6. • Kabeer, N. 2010. Women’s Empowerment, Development Interventions and the

Management of Information Flows, IDS Bulletin 41, 6.• Sen, A. 1990. Development as Capability Expansion, in Human Development and the

International Development Strategy for the 1990s, ed. K. Griffi n and J. Knight (London: MacMillan)

• Song, Y. and R., Vernooy 2010. Seeds of Empowerment: Action Research in the Context of the Feminization of Agriculture in Southwest China, Gender Technology and Development 14, 1: 25– 44.

Alessandra Galiè: a.galie@cgiar.org