Focus on gender in Ethiopian value chains

[Wim Goris]

APF Agri-Hub Ethiopia organized the first event in 2012 about gender in value chains. The workshop on 7 Feb in Kaleb hotel Addis was attended by 38 people (20 women, 18 men) from universities, BDS providers, NGOs and producer organizations.  Participants mentioned ‘We work in value chains and really want to address gender, but we do not now how to’. By providing practical tools this workshop addressed a felt need.

The workshop had an interactive character and was very dynamic. During the first exercise the arguments for gender sensitive value chains development were listed: It is ‘fair’ to make value chain development benefit men and women equally and to make it contribute to greater gender equality. But it is also smart economics: women often play important (but invisible) roles in value chains, therefore they are an important factor in upgrading a value chain, they are also crucial for poverty alleviation as they are more likely to use increased income for the wellbeing of their family. 

Subsequently in 8 sub-groups participants practiced 4 tools to make different phases of a value chain intervention gender sensitive: selection of a value chain, value chain mapping, analysis of costs and benefits and monitoring of impacts. The tools were taken from the toolkit attached to the gender in value chain Ning. According to the participants they were in general “comprehensive, practical, easy to use, and helped to gain insight”. As one participant put it “gender has been on the agenda for a long time, but translation to practice is still lacking; today we have learned some tools that can be helpful in transforming our practice.” Others mention that the tools can be used to convince their colleagues.

Participants also realized that this one-day workshop was not enough. The proposed coaching track which the Agri-hub Ethiopia intends to start as follow up of this workshop was received very positively; “a great idea to provide assistance to people while they are trying to apply what they have learned during this workshop”

The workshop was facilitated by Angelica Senders of Fair and Sustainable Advisory Services and Lenesil Asfaw. The workshop was organized by Wikke Tuinhout from Fair and Sustainable Ethiopia, for more information contact: [e-mail]

[Silvia Sarapura]

Congratulations. Good model to follow to train practitioners but  unfortunately, we cannot have access to the toolkit... Is there any way we can have access to the toolkit? 

[Silvia Sarapura]

Thank you for posting the toolkit... Excellent

[Roel Snelder]

here is the link to the toolkit