This poster was presented by Eileen Nchanji (International Center for Tropical Agriculture/CIAT), as part of the Annual Scientific Conference hosted by the University of Canberra and co-sponsored by the University of Canberra, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) and CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research. The event took place on April 2-4, 2019 in Canberra, Australia. Read more: https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/faculty-research-centres/aisc/seeds-of-change and https://gender.cgiar.org/annual-conference-2019/

1. Commodity Corridor approach: Facilitating gender
integration in development research at different scales
in Africa
Eileen Bogweh Nchanji*a , Eliud Birachia
a International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Regional Office, Kenya
* Corresponding author: e.nchanji@cigar.org
Methods
A mixed method approach was employed in
collecting data for over 22 months.
• Business platform meetings, participant
observation, field visits, secondary sources.
Results and Discussions
Women are primarily bean producers, but face
varied constraints in the different corridor
hubs:
• Drudgery - women are expected to manage
the farm and reproductive roles with little
or no support from their spouse.
• With increased commercialization, men are
at the fore front of marketing, limiting
women’s control over money accrued from
bean sales.
• Field demonstrations and trainings are far
from homesteads, making it difficult for
women to participate.
Through operationalization of the corridor, we
have been able to:
Results and Discussions -
Cont’d
• Introduce time and labour saving
technologies to reduce drudgery for women
and create new employment opportunities
for youths.
• Link farmers especially women digitally to
markets and other service providers in the
platform.
• This way women get money directly from
sales and boost their decision making power
at farm and household levels.
• Enhance and strengthen private sector
entrepreneurs (of which most are women)
in pooling beans from farmers.
• Promote precooked and biofitified (iron and
zinc) bean products to reduce food and
nutritional insecurity especially for
adolescent girls, women of reproductive age
and children less than 6.
Introduction
Bean farmers especially women in Sub-Saharan
Africa are grappling with low yields amidst
growing demand for bean. The Pan African
Bean Alliance (PABRA) introduced the
commodity corridor/bean corridor (CC/BC), to
address market and production constraints,
and stimulate investments along the bean
value chain.
Bean corridors are areas of bean intensification
characterised by flows and linkages to markets,
made up of production, distribution, and
consumption hubs (Figure 1).
Production hubs are sites with current and
future potential for large-scale bean
production. Distribution hubs include product
distribution centers, aggregation centers,
warehouses, storage points, and commodity
exchanges, for distributing beans to markets
and consumers. Consumption hubs are major
market outlets – supermarkets, institutions
and processing units.
Conceptualisation
The bean corridor approach is a tool which
assists in identifying gender constraints across
the different bean corridors in the different
hubs; and provides a platform for addressing
these constraints to achieve food and nutrition
security, agricultural transformation and
inclusive growth.
Objective
This approach aims to shift bean production
and marketing from subsistence to commercial
production; thus increasing income, improving
food and nutritional security amongst
smallholder farmers especially women and
youths in Africa.
It also guides in identifying gender constraints
and entry points at the different hubs, thereby
making the value chain responsive and
inclusive to all target beneficiaries.
Highlights (make women
visible)
• Drudgery has been reduced through pre and
post harvest technology adoption (locally
made threshers have been introduced in
Tanzania and Burundi)
• 40 to 50% of women have leadership positions
in the business platforms
• Increased participation of women in farm
management and agronomic trainings
• Increased number of women entrepreneurs
Conclusion
Transforming the bean sector, prompts shifts in
gender roles, participation, control over
income and decision making at farm and
households levels. With the different
interventions in place (Figure 3); we aim to
achieve a more inclusive and sustainable
agricultural system that addresses gender
inequality and reduces poverty by creating
opportunities for women and youths not
forgetting men.
Figure 1: Key component of the bean corridor
Figure 3: Visible gender impacts from operationalizing the CC
Figure 2: Talking
on gender gaps at
the Rwandan
bean business
platform