Regional Markets

4 Opportunities for development
medicinal plants for sale as well as vegetables and fruits for both household consumption
and sale on the local market. The women who participated in the project reported
that their mobility was traditionally restricted and monitored by their husbands. After
joining FoSHoL, they felt that their freedom of movement had increased, and that they
were now participating in meetings alongside men as equals. They have been enjoying
renewed respect within their families. With regard to rice seed production, women are
employed in both local production and central processing.
In Senegal specific attention is given to empowering women by facilitating their participation
in the entire groundnut value chain. Most women still do not have access
to or control over land and other means of production. Credit and seed distribution
are generally diverted to men who have control over land and natural resources.
With support of Action Aid Senegal, women can gain access to and control over
land and other productive resources. In the groundnut sector, women are now organising
themselves to collect their harvests and to market their products themselves.
Examples of major successes include the Taiba Niassene village, where the intervillage
association of groundnut producers (GIPA) is almost exclusively made up of
women (99%). In this village, women largely control the marketing and processing
components (previously controlled by men), and actively participate in the decisionmaking
process of CCPA.
The C:AVA case also shows that women have an important role in food production—
especially staple foods such as cassava. The Malawi case explicitly mentioned that the
majority of small-scale farmers who participated in the project are women. By integrating
these producers and small-scale processors in new value chains, their economic
clout in their communities is significantly enhanced.
On the other hand, RUDI in Tanzania, another intervention specifically focused on
food crops, does not make any specific mention of a gender dimension in their work.
The project talks about small-scale maize and rice producers in general, not making any
distinction between men and women. The project may utilise some aspects of a gendersensitive
approach, but is not a prominent part of its strategy.
Cases that focus on food crops used as export cash crops, such as the banana case
and the cotton case in Zimbabwe, reaffirm the observation that there is a strong link
between male-dominated trade flows and cash crop production. Only 32% of the 2,500
smallholder farmers in the banana value chain are women, only a slight increase from
the 24% before the intervention. Although women, in the Zimbabwean cotton case,
make up approximately 60% of smallholder cotton farmers, they have traditionally been
assigned certain limited roles. Women and youth produce and harvest the crops, but
when it comes to marketing, men dominate and also control the income. In the cotton
145