Presented by Alessandra Galiè at the Livestock and Fish Gender Working Group Workshop and Planning Meeting, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14-18 October 2013

1. 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
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2. Overview of presentation
• Project overview
• Empowerment in the project proposal
• Next steps: integrating an empowerment
framework and pathway in the project

3. 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

4. Impact pathway

5. Project villages
Ihanda
Kunke
Masinyeti
Wami Luhindo

6. 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

7. Gender strategy and activities
Strategy: 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

8. Goat houses

9. Cassava and sweet potato fields

10. Fieldwork in Wami Luhindo

11. 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 genderbased 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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)

15. 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?

16. 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

17. 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

18. Integrating the empowerment
framework and pathway into the project
Empowerment framework and pathway
Gender analysis
Participatory ML&E
, Gender Strategy p.11

19. 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?

20. Bibliography
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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.

21. Alessandra Galiè: a.galie@cgiar.org