Can A Gender Sensitive Integrated Poultry Value Chain And Nutrition Intervention Among The Rural Poor Increase Women S Empowerment In Burkina Faso

Understanding the types of food systems interventions that foster women’s empowerment and the types of women that are able to benefit from different interventions is important for development policy. SELEVER was a gender- and nutrition-sensitive poultry production intervention implemented in western Burkina Faso from 2017 to 2020 that aimed to empower women. We evaluated SELEVER using a mixed-methods cluster-randomized controlled trial, which included survey data from 1763 households at baseline and endline and a sub-sample for two interim lean season surveys. We used the multidimensional project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI), which consists of 12 binary indicators, underlying count versions of 10 of these, an aggregate empowerment score (continuous) and a binary aggregate empowerment indicator, all for women and men. Women’s and men’s scores were compared to assess gender parity. We also assessed impacts on health and nutrition agency using the pro-WEAI health and nutrition module. We estimated program impact using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models and examined whether there were differential impacts by flock size or among those who participated in program activities. Program impacts on empowerment and gender parity were null, despite the program’s careful approach to developing a gender-sensitive intervention. Meanwhile, results of the in-depth gender-focused qualitative work conducted near the project mid-point found there was greater awareness in the community of women’s time burden and their economic contributions, but it did not seem that awareness led to increased empowerment of women. We reflect on possible explanations for the null findings. One notable explanation may be the lack of a productive asset transfer, which have previously been shown to be essential, but not sufficient, for the empowerment of women in agricultural development programs. We consider these findings in light of current debates on asset transfers. Unfortunately, null impacts on women’s empowerment are not uncommon, and it is important to learn from such findings to strengthen future program design and delivery.

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.

Enhancing women’s participation in agricultural production, including livestock production, has the potential to generate a range of benefits for rural households in the developing world. These benefits include enhanced economic welfare, investment in children’s health and nutrition, and empowerment for women. However, attitudes and norms may shape the ability of women to engage in a broader range of productive activities if those activities are not viewed as traditionally female domains. The attitudes of women themselves and their husbands may be particularly salient: if women do not view livestock production as an appropriate activity to pursue based on their perception of community norms, they may not be responsive to economic incentives designed to encourage their involvement. Similarly, if husbands do not view ownership and control over assets or the sale of agriculture as appropriate roles for their wives, it may be very challenging for women to maintain or increase their role in household agricultural production.

Agricultural development projects increasingly include women’s empowerment and gender equality among their objectives, but efforts to evaluate their impact have been stymied by the lack of comparable measures. Moreover, the context-specificity of empowerment implies that a quantitative measure alone will be inadequate to capture the nuances of the empowerment process. The Gender, Agriculture, and Assets Project, Phase 2 (GAAP2), a portfolio of 13 agricultural development projects in nine countries in South Asia and Africa, developed the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and qualitative protocols for impact evaluations. Pro-WEAI covers three major types of agencies: instrumental, intrinsic, and collective. This paper synthesizes the results of 11 mixed-methods evaluations to assess these projects’ empowerment impacts. The projects implemented the pro-WEAI and its associated qualitative protocols in their impact evaluations. Our synthesis finds mixed, and mostly null impacts on aggregate indicators of women’s empowerment, with positive impacts more likely in the South Asian, rather than African, cases. There were more significant impacts on instrumental agency indicators and collective agency indicators, reflecting the group-based approaches used. We found few significant impacts on intrinsic agency indicators, except for those projects that intentionally addressed gender norms. Quantitative analysis does not show an association between the types of strategies that projects implemented and their impacts, except for capacity building strategies. This finding reveals the limitations of quantitative analysis, given the small number of projects involved. The qualitative studies provide more nuance and insight: some base level of empowerment and forms of agency may be necessary for women to participate in project activities, to benefit or further increase their empowerment. Our results highlight the need for projects to focus specifically on empowerment, rather than assume that projects aiming to reach and benefit women automatically empower them. Our study also shows the value of both a common metric to compare empowerment impacts across projects and contexts and qualitative work to understand and contextualize these impacts.

This article reports on a cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted in 120 villages in rural Burkina Faso evaluating a multifaceted intervention (SELEVER) that seeks to increase poultry production by delivering training in conjunction with the strengthening of village-level institutions providing veterinary and credit services to poultry farmers. The intervention is evaluated in a sample of 1,080 households surveyed following two years of program implementation. Households exposed to the intervention significantly increase their use of poultry inputs (veterinary services, enhanced feeds, and deworming), and report more poultry sold and higher revenue; however, there is no evidence of an increase in profits. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that the return to inputs in the poultry market may not be sufficient to counterbalance the market costs of these inputs.