Evaluation of the value chain development program in Nigeria: Qualitative findings
Evaluation of the value chain development program in Nigeria: Qualitative findings

Author: Eissler, Sarah

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2024-01-26

Total Pages: 70

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The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Federal Government of Nigeria implemented the Nigeria Value Chain Development Program (VCDP) across six Nigerian states with the objective to improve farmer organizations’ collective efficacy, and alleviate poverty via improving rice and cassava production, farmers’ incomes, and value chain integration. The VCDP incorporated a gender-sensitive design to target women beneficiaries and improve empowerment by expanding access to training, opportunities, and resources. The VCDP also aimed to improve local infrastructure. This study presents qualitative findings from the VCDP impact evaluation. Four communities from two of the six treatment states were selected for this study: Niger and Anambra. Across study areas, sex disaggregated key-informant interview were conducted with 10 service providing agents (technical and capacity building), 8 farmer organization leaders, 14 producers, 13 processors, and 15 marketers. And 8 sex disaggregated FGDs were conducted with members of farmer organizations; 2 FGDs were also conducted with youth-only farmer organizations. Service providing agents found general success in delivering services to beneficiaries and benefitted themselves by working for the VCDP. Agents developed new skills that better enabled them to deliver services, and they benefitted from higher social standings as a result of their work. The VCDP was generally well received and improved target farmer organizations’ collective efficacy. These factors lead to improved rice and cassava production and processing, increasing access to necessary resources for value chain actors, and fostering cross node integration. Beneficiaries found that the different VCDP technical trainings that supported linkages to buyers were particularly useful for improving their outcomes within the value chains. Additionally, VCDP supported infrastructure development positively impacted value chain actors, particularly women, by reducing the time they spent on certain domestic chores and facilitated their ability to better participate in value chain activities. Some challenges persisted. Cultural norms restricted interaction between men and women in Niger state. Weak governance of participating farmer organizations, high levels of corruption, and security concerns that limited mobility and access to remote areas were especially challenging. Beneficiaries also noted that access to suitable financing was a significant challenge; the VCDP is rolling out a new financial linkages component to address this directly in 2020. Finally, beneficiaries were sometimes frustrated with what was perceived as unmet expectations or slow delivery of services by VCDP. In future iterations of VCDP and similar programs, it is recommended to continue strengthening the capacity building services to improve organizations’ collective efficacy, embed anti-corruption measures to ensure all intended beneficiaries have access to program resources, ensure appropriate and timely delivery of services to meet beneficiaries’ needs, and to strengthen the gender component of the program by increasing gender-sensitization trainings for beneficiaries, further targeting women beneficiaries for inclusion, and delivering context-specific solutions that enable all women beneficiaries have equal access to program support and resources.

Exploring gendered experiences of time-use agency in Benin, Malawi, and Nigeria as a new concept to measure women’s empowerment
Exploring gendered experiences of time-use agency in Benin, Malawi, and Nigeria as a new concept to measure women’s empowerment

Author: Eissler, Sarah

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2021-02-17

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13:

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Time use, or how women and men allocate their time, is an important aspect of empowerment. To build on this area of study, we propose and explore the concept of time-use agency in this paper, which shifts the focus from the amount of time spent on activities to the strategic choices that are made regarding how to allocate time. We draw on 92 interviews from qualitative studies in Benin, Malawi, and Nigeria to explore across contexts the salience of time-use agency as a component of women’s empowerment. Our results indicate that time-use agency is salient among both women and men and dictates how women and men are able to make and act upon strategic decisions related how they allocate their time. Our findings suggest that time-use agency is important for fully understanding empowerment with respect to time use. Importantly, this study highlights the gendered dynamics and barriers women face in exercising their time-use agency. These barriers are tied to and conditioned by social norms dictating how women should spend their time. Women often make tradeoffs throughout any given day with respect to their time, balancing their expected priorities with the barriers or limitations they face in being able to spend any additional time on tasks or activities that further their own strategic goals. Additionally, these results on time-use agency echo similar themes in the literature on gendered divisions of labor, time poverty, and decision-making, but also add new subtleties to this work. For example, we find that women can easily adjust their schedules but must carefully navigate relationships with husbands to be able to attend trainings or take on new income generating activities, results that align with previous findings that women consistently have higher involvement in small decisions compared to large ones. While these themes have been observed previously in studies of women’s empowerment, to our knowledge, our study is the first to connect them to time use and time-use agency. Our study contributes the conceptualization of time-use agency, and the identification of themes relevant to time-use agency, through the emic perspectives of women and men across three diverse settings in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a concept, time-use agency goes beyond measuring time use to understand the gendered dynamics around controlling one’s time use to advance their own strategic goals and highlights any barriers one faces in doing so. It is a particularly relevant concept for interventions that aim to increase (or at least, not diminish) women’s empowerment by promoting women’s involvement in remunerated activities. Although time-use agency, as a concept, has yet to be addressed in women’s empowerment literature. A next step in this area of inquiry is to develop survey indicators on time-use agency, which may reduce bias and cognitively burden compared to existing time use surveys.

Measuring empowerment across the value chain: The evolution of the project-level Women’s Empowerment Index for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI)
Measuring empowerment across the value chain: The evolution of the project-level Women’s Empowerment Index for Market Inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI)

Author: Malapit, Hazel J.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2023-03-09

Total Pages: 74

ISBN-13:

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Many development agencies design and implement interventions that aim to reach, benefit, and empower rural women across the value chain in activities ranging from production, to processing, to marketing. Determining whether and how such interventions empower women, as well as the constraints faced by different value chain actors, requires quantitative and qualitative tools. We describe how we adapted the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Index (pro-WEAI), a mixed-methods tool for studying empowerment in development projects, to include aspects of agency relevant for multiple types of value chain actors. The resulting pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) includes quantitative and qualitative instruments developed over the course of four studies. Studies in the Philippines (2017), Bangladesh (2017), and Malawi (2019) were intended to diagnose areas of disempowerment to inform programming, whereas the Benin (2019) study was an impact assessment of an agricultural training program. The pro-WEAI+MI includes all indicators included in pro-WEAI, plus a dashboard of complementary indicators and recommended qualitative instruments. These tools investigate the empowerment of women in different value chains and nodes and identify barriers to market access and inclusion that may restrict empowerment for different value chain actors. Our findings highlight three lessons. First, the sampling strategy needs to be designed to capture the key actors in a value chain. Second, the market inclusion indicators cannot stand alone; they must be interpreted alongside the core pro-WEAI indicators. Third, not all market inclusion indicators will be relevant for all value chains and contexts. Users should research the experiences of women and men in the target value chains in the context of the programto select priority market inclusion indicators.

Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Governance (WEAGov) assessment framework: A pilot study in Nigeria
Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Governance (WEAGov) assessment framework: A pilot study in Nigeria

Author: Ragasa, Catherine

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2024-01-24

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13:

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Women’s equal participation and leadership in political and public life can boost a country’s long-run economic growth, foster social inclusion, and help countries reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Beyond these important outcomes, women’s inclusion in public life is a basic human right: women deserve a role in making decisions, controlling resources, and shaping policies. Despite the importance of women’s voices and their empowerment in policy and decision-making processes, it is far easier to lament their absence than to define and measure them. We know that political empowerment, measured in terms of the share of women in government ministries and parliament, is low and is the weakest dimension in the Global Gender Gap. Yet such national statistics, while important and informative, risk mismeasuring women’s participation and influence in public life and do not give policymakers and advocacy organizations traction on specific gaps and opportunities for increasing women’s voice in policymaking. With this situation in mind and focusing on agrifood systems, which are crucial for delivering the SDGs, we developed an assessment framework—Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Governance (WEAGov)— to assess women’s voice and empowerment in national policy processes in agrifood systems. This paper presents the first pilot-testing of WEAGov in Nigeria. In this paper, we present how the WEAGov tool works in the Nigerian context, analyze the data, and provide diagnostic on the status of women’s voice and empowerment in the agrifood policy process. As discussed in this paper, the pilot-testing in Nigeria provides useful lessons toward improving the measurement for future use and provides valuable policy insights on critical entry points for increasing women’s voice and empowerment in the national agrifood policy process.

A review of evidence on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems
A review of evidence on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems

Author: Njuki, Jemimah

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2021-07-14

Total Pages: 55

ISBN-13:

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Achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment in food systems can result in greater food security and better nutrition, and in more just, resilient, and sustainable food systems for all. This paper uses a scoping review to assess the current evidence on pathways between gender equality, women’s empowerment, and food systems. The paper uses an adaptation of the food systems framework to organize the evidence and identify where evidence is strong, and where gaps remain. Results show strong evidence on women’s differing access to resources, shaped and reinforced by contextual social gender norms, and on links between women’s empowerment and maternal education and important outcomes, such as nutrition and dietary diversity. However, evidence is limited on issues such as gender considerations in food systems for women in urban areas and in aquaculture value chains, best practices and effective pathways for engaging men in the process of women’s empowerment in food systems, and for addressing issues related to migration, crises, and indigenous food systems. And while there are gender informed evaluation studies that examine the effectiveness of gender- and nutrition- sensitive agricultural programs, evidence to indicate the long-term sustainability of such impacts remains limited. The paper recommends keys areas for investment: improving women’s leadership and decision-making in food systems, promoting equal and positive gender norms, improving access to resources, and building cross-contextual research evidence on gender and food systems.

Conceptualizing women’s empowerment in agrifood systems governance: A new framework
Conceptualizing women’s empowerment in agrifood systems governance: A new framework

Author: Ragasa, Catherine

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2023-01-03

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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This paper develops a new framework to measure and track women’s empowerment in governance of countries’ agrifood systems. All too often, women’s needs, priorities, and voices are missing from the policy process, even when women may be disproportionately affected by shocks or have distinct policy preferences. The Women’s Empowerment in Agrifood Systems Governance (WEAGov) is an assessment framework to help countries and stakeholders measure the extent of inclusion and leadership of women in agrifood systems governance and to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. WEAGov looks across three stages of the policy cycle: policy design, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. At each stage of the policy cycle, WEAGov asks three questions central to women’s empowerment in governance: Are women considered? Are women included? And are women influencing? This paper describes the process of conceptualizing and developing the WEAGov assessment framework by drawing together evidence, experience, and lessons from the literature and from over 30 stakeholder consultations across several countries and sectors to develop a practical and theoretically grounded framework.

African food systems transformation and the post-Malabo agenda
African food systems transformation and the post-Malabo agenda

Author: Ulimwengu, John M.

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2023-12-04

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13:

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This year marks 20 years of implementing the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which was broadened under the 2014 Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity and Improved Livelihoods. The 2023 Annual Trends and Outlook Report generates evidence on the implementation of the CAADP/Malabo agenda and thus contributes to the design of the post-Malabo phase of CAADP implementation. The report assesses the current state of Africa's food systems, explores strategic issues related to food systems transformation, and reflects on necessary methodologies and approaches to provide a better understanding of key challenges and necessary actions to accelerate transformation.

Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review
Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review

Author: Andrew Booth

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2021-11-10

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 152975965X

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Whether you are new to literature reviews or working with new types of data, this book takes the guesswork out of writing your literature review. From deciding how much literature to include to managing your data, assessing your sources, and writing results, it outlines a step-by-step process that works with any data. To help you choose best approach for your research, this book includes: · Worksheets and decision aids to help you plan and organise your literature review · Worked examples and case studies to show you what – and what not – to do in practice · Troubleshooting tips and answers to all your frequently asked questions · Online access to a literature review starter template, an exercise workbook, project diary template, and a source credibility checklist. The perfect project support for any social sciences student, this edition also includes a new chapter on analysing mixed methods research.

Food systems transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the past and policy options for the future Loading... Files Full Book (7.78 MB, pdf) Chapters List (73 KB, pdf) Authors Breisinger, Clemens Keenan, Michael Mbuthia, Juneweenex Njuki, Jemimah Date Issued 2023-12-20 Language en Type Book Review Status Peer Review Access Rights Open Access Open Access Usage Rights CC-BY-4.0 Metadata Sha
Food systems transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the past and policy options for the future Loading... Files Full Book (7.78 MB, pdf) Chapters List (73 KB, pdf) Authors Breisinger, Clemens Keenan, Michael Mbuthia, Juneweenex Njuki, Jemimah Date Issued 2023-12-20 Language en Type Book Review Status Peer Review Access Rights Open Access Open Access Usage Rights CC-BY-4.0 Metadata Sha

Author: Breisinger, Clemens

Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst

Published: 2024-02-12

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13:

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The new Kenyan government faces a complex domestic and global environment, and it is widely expected to address key food and agricultural challenges with a new set of policies and programs. This policy brief presents key recommendations from a forthcoming book, Food Systems Transformation in Kenya: Lessons from the Past and Policy Options for the Future, which provides research-based “food for thought and action” to support the Kenyan government’s efforts to improve food security.