GENDER EXPERT MEETING APF EF, 11th of Oct 2010
Subject
Date
Status
From
To
: Women Economic Empowerment, APF-Ethiopia Forum Expert
Meeting
: 9th of November 2010
: Final
: Eva Smulders
: APF Ethiopia & APF WW Gender
Present
Misrak Aklilu
Gizachew Sisay
Ejigayehu Teffera
Lula Hussein
Eva Smulders &
Wengelawit Asres
Metsehet Ayenekulu
Etalem Mengistu
Facilitator for
Change
Oxfam-GB
SNV
Sos-Sahel
F&S BDS PLC
0911757612
fce@ethionet.et
0911889468
0114654386
0913225551
0114671059
Royal Netherlands
Emb.
Private consultant
0910448942
gsisay@oxfam.org.uk
eteffera@snvworld.org
tiya-lul@yahoo.com
esmuldersfnads@gmail.com
gosple4@yahoo.com
M.Ayenekulu@minbuza.nl
0911889468
etalemm@gmail.com
Agenda
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
1
Introduction
Case presentations and discussion
General reflections
Closing remarks from the consultant
Way forward
Introduction
The meeting kicked of with a short introduction on AgriProFocus (more info on http://apfethiopia.ning.com/). The Ethiopian network in general, the focus on gender and the
write-shops around value chain development, and specifically the one to be organized in
Nairobi end of November on gender and Value Chains.
More information on the special global website/ning on gender in VCD:
http://genderinvaluechains.ning.com
2
Case Presentations
All participants presented the cases, which they proposed for the value chain write shop
in Nairobi. Below a short overview of the cases and the main discussion points.
2.1
Soybean VC from bean to milk by Facilitator for Change
Main issues on the presentation
The Value Chain project area is Jimma, Kersa.
Females are highly participating in the soybean value chain on different levels
 Smallholder farmers (production function),
 Farmers Marketing Organizations (Collecting, cleaning and packing function),
 Women Cluster Level Associations (Processing function)
 Temki PLC (Distribution)
 Hospital, Cafe and Universities (Consumption)
To specify on the different levels:
Gender at Household level:
 400 farmers involved (65 females) in soybean production for which 215 ha land is
covered
 Women farmers were trained on soybean agronomic practices and food
preparation techniques
 The initiative has improved access to and control over resources (soybean
product) of married rural women through high involvement in local markets and
FMOs.
 The initiative is linked to the Women Self Help Groups of the three districts
through organizing food preparation trainings and food exhibition.
 It improved the nutritional problem of the children and the community.
Gender at Farmer Market organization level
 Five FMOs that have legal entity are selected for the purpose
 It supports the participation of women (both in quantity and quality) at the
Farmers Organizations Level to benefit them equally with men counterparts.
 15% increase in participation of female at membership position as a result of
sensitization and bylaw revision (double membership of bothhusband and wife)
Gender at CLA
 One strong CLAs consisting of 165 mothers is linked to FMOs.
 The CLA is engaged in soybean processing (soybean milk production)
 The poor women of Jimma town who are organized in the Cluster Level
Association (CLA) have improved their livelihood through better income by the
Service Enterprise and Market Development initiative of the program.
Main questions and observations:
 Because of cultural barrier (it’s mainly a Muslim area) there is a problem on
female participation in the value chain.
o The revision of the by-laws has helped to increase female participation
and membership in the organizations.
 To give them a role in the processing the participation of women improved, but
still in the production of the soya bean the males are dominant.
o The approach is mostly on Female, especially it includes poor women
2.2
Honey VC women leadership Oxfam GB – Case selected for writeshop
Main issues in the presentation:
The issue of gender in Oxfam is non-negotiable
We put women at the heart of our work (be it humanitarian, development or policy)
Recently Oxfam adopted Gendered value chain approach where the role, participation,
leadership and benefit of women in the whole chain is analyzed. Key questions
 How do men & women engage in and benefit differently from these VC markets?
 In which areas of the market map are women concentrated?
 Beyond numbers of men and women – what institutions, companies, policies
and practices are more inclusive or exclusive of women smallholders?
Accordingly programs are designed
Honey and wax are high potential crops, but some problems encountered for women
entrepreneurship:
 Beekeeping is considered as men’s function (women are not considered as BKs)
b/c
 Hives are kept on the trees
 Afraid bee sting
 Do not have skill & know-how & lack access to tech & market
 Thus participation of women in the beekeeping sub-sector is insignificant (1%)
 95% of the bee colonies are kept in traditional hives Even kept in back yard, the
setting of traditional hive is not convenient for women to manage (sting etc)
 Productivity is low and quality is poor
Still attractive and possible because:
 BK has strong potential for poverty reduction (income & employment generation
for smallholders, mainly for women, landless and youth)
 Improved beekeeping technology will allow women to participate in production as
well as marketing of honey.
 Can be done in spare time & at homestead where women can manage/engage
 BK doesn’t need land, labor and investment on inputs as compared to other
agriculture activities (eg crop production)
 Government’s priority for the sub-sector is high

Productivity & quality can be improved easily @ scale
What was done:
 Gender was one of the criteria used in the selection of the commodity
 Identified key actors in the chain, the key levers for change, constraints and
potentials to engage women,
 Oxfam’s facilitation role with due consideration of women
 Strategies to address gender related issue in the value chain
o Participation of women reduces as we go up in the VC
 Interventions at each stage of the chain identified
o Organizing women beekeepers into SHGs to access training, credit,
inputs and market
o Capacity building of women BKs (to transform their subsistent production
into commercial & introduce FAL)
o Facilitate linkage between producers and private sector
o Plan to launch specialty honey marketing produced by Women BKs
 Sensitization of VC actors about issue of gender (how to engage women in the
chain)
 Engage more women in the HVC stakeholders forums
Interventions and achievements
 Through the interventions (training of women beekeepers on use of technology,
provision of improved hives) the participation of women on beekeeping increased
(from 1% to 17% in the piloting phase of the project) and now to 40%
 Usually husbands do not allow wives to travel long distance to attend trainings
organized in towns. OGB with the private company (Ambrosia plc) has
established beekeeping training and demonstration centre in the villages, which
as a result 80 women beekeepers were trained.
 Now women beekeepers have learnt management of improved beehives and use
of beekeeping tools and equipments. The materials and equipments have
increased their confidence. For example the gloves and veil make them not to
afraid beestings.
 On the other hand women have become active participants in the honey value
chain by making accessories such as (veil, gloves, basket hives) and able to
generate income in addition to the income from sale of honey.
Case:
Zenbu Melese, 58, female beekeeper and also treasurer of the Tana Zuria Bees’
products development and marketing cooperative, told her personal experience by
emphasizing the importance of the cooperative. She said ‘before we were exposed to
illegal traders. They didn’t even tell us the exact weight of the honey and they didn’t
give us the right price. Now, because of the coop, we are getting the right price now
and the dividend latter. We know and trust the people working in the coop, even if we
didn’t read and write. There is no more traveling long distance and no risk of theft’.
Challenges
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Social construct of thinking ‘men are beekeepers’
Capacity of producers in maintaining quality and supply
Lack of product diversification (such as propolis and venom)
Inability to benefit from large exports markets
Environmental degradation
It is transformed from traditional to Modern, which makes the access for women
easier, but still there is a thinking men are Beekeeping
Comments and input on how to present the case in Nairobi.
 Pls talk about the taboo for women to participate not giving the excuses as the
main reason, like strength, fear for stings, these only make the focus worse
 Check the figures. Even these figures are from more a men’s way of looking at
activities. Women DO participate but are not counted often bcz they are not ehad
of the household for example.
 Go beyond the figures. Although women earn more how can we make sure they
also have control over their earnings.
 Role of Oxfam GB very interesting as a facilitator
 Illiteracy seems to be the real bottleneck
 Funding still an issue for access. How to make sure you are making the new
techniques accessible for women.
2.3
Honey VC women leadership – SNV in name of Rahi Mar PLC
Main issues from the presentation
First females were not accepted to go into the honey production, after convincing them,
20 women are started and engaged on Beekeeping.
Rahel is one of them and:- She became capable
- Self-confidence build
- Installed processing plant
- Chairperson
- Market link
- The women didn’t manage as expected
Impact
 A large group of destitute women is on the way to becoming self-supporting
 Children who did not attend schools are doing so
 overall well-being has improved (visibly by better clothing and nutrition)
 Women beekeepers – diversified IGAs
 Beneficiaries (re) gained dignity
 A blue collar citizen become a visible apiculture investor
Learnt lessons
 Bees can sting! But women can produce/use protective clothing after obtaining
the training and started to use the protective cloth, the women regrettably say “If
we had known this technique earlier, we would have been engaged in honey
production even before now.”
 One does not need previous experience to be a good modern beekeeper but one
needs substantial on the job experience
 Women beekeeper groups can be transformed into well organized women
beekeepers’ associations
 International NGOs (as SNV did) can offer partnerships and linkages

Challenges
 It was difficult to convince women
 The women as expected didn’t manage to become bee colony producers & to
purchase more bee hives.
 Many people were discouraging Rahel for being involved in men’s work
 The work requires to travel frequently – she misses her family, safety issue,
discomfort
 Less access to information
 Shy (less confidence as a leader)
 Lack of Financial resource
Opportunities
 Good collaboration from government officials to give her land
 Previously owned piece of fenced land
 Very supportive and understanding family
 Linkages created
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SNV’s advisory service, financial & technical support
Experience sharing in apiculture board or coordinating group meetings
High demand for organic honey
Main discussion topics
How she manages the finance?
She indeed needs working capital.
In most women entrepreneur the major problem is finance, now we get loan
guarantee for women.
- Enat Bank – has promise for women Entrepreneur’s to give credit
- USAID has a special program to promote women entrepreneurship.
2.4
Aloe Value Chain Soap Processing women in Diid yabelo
SOS – Sahel
SOS Sahel Ethiopia has been addressing women’s livelihood and economic needs
within many of its programs and projects. It has got a grant from Oxfam Canada for the
“Value Chain Empowerment through Women-Led Initiative of Pastoral Community of
Borana” project are the poor households and women in Ade-Galchat, El-waye and Diid
Yabelo villages in Yabelo District where highest concentration of the gum and incense
source trees and aloe plant is found in abundance. About 700 households (with about
3500 household members) in the three villages are directly targeted for this intervention.
The proposed intervention also target, private sector (local merchants and exporters),
market cooperatives and local government staff that have been directly involved in nontimber forest products (NTFPs) harvesting and marketing including aloe soap, incense
and gum/resin products. Thus, indirectly some potential members and other value chain
actors like traders, inputs suppliers and potential co-operative members indirectly benefit
from this project.
Though many of these pastoralists would have been more transhumant in nature in the
past, today they are settled or semi-settled and base their transhumance from a
permanent household. Usually the husband will still travel with the livestock to find water
and grazing, whilst the wife stays at home.
The project trained the women led group to make soap, the pastoralist women has
already started selling their product to the local market.
Quality control Actions:
 Standardization: The cooperative should standardize its Aloe soap and ensure
that it complies with government regulations.
 Packaging and labeling: the Aloe cooperatives should improve the soap
Constrains or challenge
 Resource ownerships: the resource is owned communally but only few
cooperative members are benefitting from it.
 Marketing of the Aloe soap due to other soap from Kenya and within Ethiopia.
 Product diversification: availability of soap with the different Aromas
 Quality control: The ingredient has to be fully and accurately measured and
mixed properly with close supervision of quality control committee. Collaboration
with quality control agency of Government to get advises on quality improvement.
Lesson Learnt
 Involvement of all actors in the chain is crucial
 Danger of project phase out: the project might phase out before the impact of the
cooperatives is seen
Main discussion/ questions
How does it relate to their pastoralist life style?
This pastoralist are not moving with the entire family it’s more the father and/or
youth that moves with the herd.
Does Aloe have a market, customer need assessment and feed-back?
Plan to bring the product to NGO market/exhibition.
Food security
When men move there are food scarcity for those behind. They now keep some
life-stock and cultivation of smaller areas
How the Soap is accepted
Aloe is known traditionally so he community accept the product an introduce to
others. And also they use as a medicine. They have a plan to promote the
product on the AA market.
3
General reflections on the cases
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4
We know better the participation and hard data of men’s participation or at
least general number but we do not specifically have data on women
participation in and around the VC and entrepreneurship. We need numbers
that distinguish.
Women have access through our special programs, but still the men have
both access and control.
Women are market players but only when small amounts are at stake, when
the production or quantity sold grows the men take over.
Women are more linked to the consumables and buy consumables from it.
Men take the large quantities and are more of a collectors/traders
Again the women purchase and the men are purchaser and supplier.
New market or new commodity is easy to engage for women but on the
existing system it is not easy.
Still the women have little assets like land, savings, house, which makes
them vulnerable.
When value is added again, men in most cases take over.
Closing remarks from the consultant
Gender in Value Chain Development
Gender analysis is generally the weakest point in most value chain analyses, and largely
ignored in most value chain manuals. Gender differences and inequalities affect the
ways in which value chains operate at every level. Women and men are likely to be
involved at different stages of the chain as producers and entrepreneurs, in marketing
and as consumers. Those areas where women are involved are often less visible and
may be overlooked in both analysis and development.
Information gap
 Participation of men and women in seed selection
 Number of men and women researchers
 Number of men and women extension workers
 Research information disseminations to men and women
 The amount of commodity allocated to home consumption
 How much cash is earned by men and women from sells of commodity
 How much of the cash is used by men and women for family and for personal
use
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How much commodity is supplied by women to the market in a year
In terms of receiving dividends the 15 to 28 %, members of the FMOs being
women they would receive dividend on their shares , but how the income is
used and who decides on how it is used with in the household needs a further
assessment to be certain on how the intervention benefited women
participants.
Message is: be careful how you measure.
Measure on time: have a baseline that is gender sensitive.
Use methodologies that are gender sensitive in the VC approach
5
Way forward
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Oxfam GB will give a de-briefing after the write-shop (from 22 to 30th of
November 2010).
Next year a book launch will be organized which gives an opportunity to present
and discuss more topics related to gender and VCD in a broader setting.
Idea is to invite some successful businesswomen (in the Agricultural sector) in
Ethiopia for a dinner and hear about their “way to the top”.
There is a workshop Gender and Market-oriented Agriculture 2011 (AgriGender
2011): From Research to Practice
31st January-2nd February, 2011. Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, organized by ILRI.