THE CHANGE PAGE
Gender and agriculture in Africa: the 'expert' neglect of local
practice
Margaret Grieco,
Professor of Organisation and Development Management,
The Business School, University of North London
and
Nana Araba Apt,
Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Social Policy Studies,
University of Ghana, Legon
Abstract
Women carry the primary responsibility
for food security in Africa yet development agencies have devoted minimal
resources to researching the impact of their agricultural policies and new
techniques on the well being of Africa's women farmers. The dominant focus has
been on the cash crop activities of Africa's men farmers and agricultural
research and investment has largely been confined to this domain. There is
clear evidence that in many parts of Africa, women and men operate separate
income and expenditure streams, with women carrying the primary burden for the
financing of children's welfare. Whilst local practice is to separate male and
female economic accounts, women and children are rarely the beneficiaries of
the income generated by cash crops; their present well being is founded rather
in subsistence farming. The external expert perspective of the key development
agencies, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary, continues to assume a
unified household where income earned by males is shared with and distributed
amongst their wife/wives and children. As a consequence, gender appropriate
agricultural policies and services have failed to develop. This paper will contrast
the evidence on local practice with the persistence of inappropriate external
expert perspectives, indicate the consequences of this tension and make
recommendations for new and better gendered approaches to agriculture in Africa
1. Time to push for a paradigm shift: the urgent need for a gendered
approach to agricultural policy in Africa.
The argument we put forward today is the simplest of arguments. It has great
policy immediacy. Nevertheless, it is an argument which, despite its clarity
and its constant reproduction and replication by those concerned about food
security in Africa, has largely been disattended to. The argument is that women
are an integral part of the African farming structure and that the dominant
agricultural policies developed for Africa, with the disproportionate
involvement and influence of external experts, have ignored this gender
dimension at a very real cost to African agriculture and to gender equity
within the continent (Boserup, 1970; Saito and Spurling, 1992; Gladwin, 1997).
When first we thought of making this presentation at ISA, the literature making
this argument from an indigenous African knowledge base was scarce on the
ground and where it was present it was highly fragmented. Rather the
celebration of the expert capabilities of agencies such as the World Bank in
the field of agriculture was very much the vogue. At a discussion of
agricultural extension capabilities at the World Bank HQ led by the 'doyen' of
extension knowledge and practices, Danny Benor, the question was raised as to
how present extension practices took account of African female farmers' needs.
The answer received from Benor was that there were no 'female farmers', there
were only 'farmers' (Grieco, 1997).
This complete disregard for the technical literature which has observed gender
differentiations in behaviour, consequent upon the gender roles and divisions
of labour in society, and the consequences of these differences within Africa's
agricultural system (Quisumbing et al., 1995; Gladwin and Macmillan, 1989;
Gladwin, 1992) is profoundly disturbing - not least because of the dominance of
this external expert in setting operational practices within the agricultural
policies of the World Bank, a key agency in this field.
The dominance of an external expert served to close down the discussion of
readily observable patterns of gender differentiation in agriculture which have
consequences both for the welfare of Africa's female farmers and for the health
of Africa's agricultural economy - a critical sector for Africa. It is a
powerful example of the prevailing development agency practices of ignoring the
importance of the local context - the assumption of the primacy of expert
'universal' knowledge is used to diminish the relevance of local detail even
when the site on which that 'expertise' is to be applied is indeed 'local'. The
consequence of epistemologies which 'homogenise' all experience and disregard
the local is project or operational failure - for local realities can not be
defined away, they intervene in the process of the application of 'expert'
knowledge to the local situation. For our purposes here today we use the Benor
signal, and Benor has been central in the design of agricultural extension
policy and practice for a great part of the African continent, on the
irrelevance of gender to African agriculture to illustrate the strength of the
old paradigm in operations - despite all scientific and local evidence to the
contrary.
On a more positive note, within the World Bank, there has been some limited
movement towards changing the paradigm. The gender network within the Bank has
been developing a 'gender and agricultural tool kit' available on the Bank
intranet - the strategic thrust behind such technical developments is that the existence
of such tool kits will make it easier for task managers on agricultural
projects to take gender on board. It is part of a 'persuasive' rather than a
'proscriptive' portfolio for increasing the gender content of Bank agricultural
activities. Evaluative work to assess the extent to which the availability of
such 'tool kits' translates into operational change does not yet seem to be
hand. But the signs are that there is some ground for believing a push on the
old paradigm could see a change.
There is a need for caution in simply trusting to the tools of rational thought
and the skilled presentation of evidence, even with the aid of the most
advanced information technologies, in producing a paradigm change. More active
intervention in gaining a paradigm change is required: at the same time, in
1998 and post-Beijing, as the Bank is developing gender and agriculture
toolkits, a major meeting at the Bank on rural development was set to go
forward without any explicit gender stream or gender content - a meeting which
was to be held jointly with FAO. In the event, the deficiency was corrected -
but that it was even conceivable to hold such a meeting on rural development
without a gender component in 1998 speaks to the strength of the old paradigm.
The institutional reality remains that of operational disattention to gender
issues in agriculture and related areas such as transport and microfinance. A
disturbing feature of this disattention is that it coexists with public
statements that actively promote participation and consultation as part of the
development agenda. The participatory protocols and measures necessary to
ensure that gender is integral to this process have not been put in place.
Similarly, evaluation procedures which provide a precise assessment of the
gender content of operational activities are not in place. The term
'mainstreaming' has largely been used to remove accountability in respect of
providing a precise specification of the gender content or gender implications
of any particular programme or project. If we want to test whether this is the
case then we ought to be able to establish from any set of project accounts or
program a statistic for the gender split on the benefits of any particular
intervention: typically, that is not possible because of the way in which
operations are organised without explicit reference to or planning around
gender. The label 'mainstreamed' largely serves to disguise the fact that there
is no attempt to measure the gender incidence of benefits, a label which has
recently been joined by the sister concept 'gender neutral'. Consultancy and
policy documents begin to be replete with the term 'gender neutral' without any
evidence of research or theorising which demonstrates the technology or policy
so referred to is indeed 'gender neutral'.
In the absence of a willingness to begin to set up precise measures around the
gender split in benefits within a gender mainstreaming paradigm and in the
absence of a willingness to directly target gender inequities within the
operational development agenda, then the paradigm which disregards women's
problems and contributions in relation to the agricultural economy of Africa is
likely to stay in place.
To summarise we now have:
To this present policy recipe a new element is now being added, an element which may help towards reversing the present vicious downward policy spiral.
Reflecting this vibrant social movement in Africa,
.
The participation channel may enable a forcing of 'operations' to recognise the
gender dimension of African agriculture in a way that simple scientific
evidence did not. To be their most effective in utilising the participation
channel or strategy in pushing the paradigm towards a more gender realist
frame, African women will need ready access to scientific knowledge around
their circumstances as well as ways of recording and presenting their own
particular local experiences. It is to this discussion we now move.
2. New literatures, new information technologies: the breaking of an
external expert hegemony.
The thrust of our argument so far is that there has been scientific knowledge
available that makes an indisputable case for the targeted servicing of
Africa's female farmers but power relations both within development agencies
and within African societies themselves have permitted operational 'experts',
staff and programmes to disattend to this evidence. But gender relations in
Africa and within the development agencies themselves are under change. Within
this change, the ability of African women to generate the messages, demands and
knowledge which reflect their own reality and effectively transmit these to
those who control financial and physical resources is key.
Part of this effectiveness lies in the volubility or amplification of the
message so that donors do indeed hear, part lies in ensuring the transparency
of donor answers to the wider community when issues such as project failure or
inadequate participation protocols are discussed. Historically, where external
expert knowledge failed locally, information on that failure was largely
confined to the locality - with the exceptions of major disasters such as
famines or dam bursts or other such global newsworthy events. With the advent
of the Internet, and other electronic advocacy and feedback technologies,
localities can relatively easily and cheaply themselves relate their
experiences of project failure for international attention (see for example the
level of global discussion which has taken place upon the global knowledge web site initiated
by the Canadian Government and the World Bank). Transparent client complaint
and feedback has the potential to disrupt and to break the traditional resource
and knowledge hegemony of the external expert.
Literature on experiences can be more rapidly gathered on the net and
structured so as to better reflect actual experiences - systematic procedures
for collecting information and organising it appropriately provide as real and
scientific a take on reality as many of the costly inappropriate paper forms
currently used by those surveying African poverty profiles (the most recent
household survey tool of the Africa region of the World Bank - CWIK - does not
identify male and female agricultural lands and equipment separately despite a
host of African evidence that indicates that this should indeed be done). With
a relatively small call on their resources, donor agencies could enable African
agricultural experts and African female farmers to place relevant social and
technical knowledge on electronic modes. E-mail connections between local
African experts across different countries could greatly assist in the
development of more appropriate bodies of technical knowledge to meet the
African agricultural situation.
Where African literatures have been developed, the dissemination of these
literatures must be a priority. Placing materials on a dedicated African gender
and agriculture web site would permit the ready down loading of papers,
articles and even visual materials at point of use: operating in this way would
greatly reduce printing and postal and packaging costs. Technical materials
become readily available for extension activities in this way.
As important as the power of the new technology to deliver newly developed
local materials across Africa is, the technology has an even greater power in
its ability to relay video materials which are not dependent on literacy and
which can be observed and appreciated by the non-literate. The video
capabilities of web sites give a new instrument in the amplification of gender
and agriculture extension messages. Through downloaded video materials, practical
demonstrations of agricultural techniques can be seen in any location and the
presence of women as leaders and experts in the development of these practices
can be viewed from the web.
At present, the spread of the new information technologies across Africa has
been fairly constrained but there are a set of technological initiatives
(Worldspace would be one such initiative) which are set to provide for hand
held satellite linked technologies on a basis cheap enough to service rural
Africa. Precisely because much of rural Africa is poorly serviced by
conventional infrastructure, there is a pressure to make use of satellite
technologies to deliver services to poorly penetrated rural areas, health
knowledge and education would be examples of services which may be assisted in
this way. The promotion of good agricultural practices, most particularly in
respect of gender, is clearly another.
We have already seen that African women are beginning to develop their own
agricultural literature which recognises and reflects their needs and
resources, we have now indicated that the new information technologies can
amplify and strengthen the message and effectiveness of that literature to
influence policy makers. Whether this will be enough to shift the existing hegemony
is not certain but it most certainly provides a new opportunity for mounting
the challenge.
3. Integrating local knowledge, mapping the detail: tools for gendered
agricultural policy.
The advent of geographical information systems also provides a new opportunity
for policy makers to take on the local and gendered dimensions of African
agriculture and maintain a relevant external expertise. Through quality
information technology mapping techniques, development agencies can develop
tools which permit personnel to click on any specific geographical site and
bring up a hierarchy of information or informational categories. Entering the
detail of a local site this way permits even the novice to quickly retrieve key
information.
Organising material on a quality information map base allows personnel to
readily compare sites at very high levels of detail. The expertise lies in the
knowledge base and is no longer limited to the experiences of the particular
'external expert'.
Such systems are costly but the good news is that pilot GIS systems are now
present on an experimental basis on the World Bank intranet. Developing a GIS
system which specifically addressed gender and agriculture in Africa would be a
sensible forward move given the degree of difference and complexity within the
African system in respect of the interrelationship between gender and
agriculture. To provide an example of where such knowledge would be useful let
us consider the issue of whether to plant short stem or long stem rice in any
particular location. In some areas, rice is a women's crop and in other areas
it is a men's crop. Where it is a women's crop, then long stem rice is the more
appropriate strain as women often farm with babies at their back. Where it is a
men's crop, then short stem rice which has a higher yield may be appropriate.
Knowing which gender farms rice in any particular location is clearly important
to the decision as to which type of crop is to be promoted by the external
agency resourcing the project. GIS mapping allows the ready accessing of such
relevant and locally detailed gender knowledge.
A benefit of GIS maps made available over the web would be that locally
gathered information and comment or feedback can more readily be entered. This
would permit the more ready correction of errors which occur when local
information is misunderstood or misclassified or simply neglected by 'external
experts'. A GIS map focused on gender and agriculture in Africa would make the
operationalisation of the gender agenda in agriculture an easier business for
all sectors (donors, governments, ngos, agricultural institutes) and provide a
tool for much better coordination between those involved in the agricultural
policy sector.
4. Participation, consultation and local needs assessment: the
systematic inclusion of local voice.
The notion that we should be shaping technologies and scientific procedures to
capture local voice may seem to many here a strange one. But the demand from
Africa is increasingly for the recognition of local voice (Apt, Agyemang Mensah
and Grieco, 1998) and the practices of the lead donors are increasingly
described by themselves in the language of participation and consultation.
Extending donor technical systems so as to be better able to capture and
benefit from local voice is a logical outcome of these processes.
Currently consultation procedures, participation and local needs assessment are
on a far from systematic platform. Frequently, final reports, consultancy
documents and even literature have all the dischordant aspects of local voice
removed from them. Generally, we are assured that a document has commenced its
history from a consultation, participation or local needs assessment process
but the document itself bears little trace of that journey and we as readers
are rarely given the information with which we can reconstruct that journey or
gain sight of the competing perspectives that led to its eventual form. The
register of difference or dissent from the polished documents of development
agencies are rarely presented to us: authentic local voice disappears under the
smoothing of the external professional hand.
Ensuring that local views have been considered and local perspectives
incorporated in operational design and implementation is a far from automatic
procedure. Currently, there are some signs of improvement within the Rural
Travel and Transport Program developed by the UNECA and World Bank in
consultation with African governments. Increasingly there is a recognition that
there is a need to involve local communities and in particular smallholder
farmers in the transport organisation of rural Africa. Until recently, the
importance of women as a source of transport in rural Africa had gone
unrecognised - but studies show that rural women carry approximately 80% of the
transport burden of rural Africa as compared with 20% for motorised transport.
The realisation that women farmers are disadvantaged by this burdensome
transport role is causing an alteration in the way in which rural transport
planning is done.
In Malawi, within the RTTP program, action is being taken to involve rural
women in the needs assessment aspects of the rural transport program as well as
in the operation and implementation of the program. But this at present represents
the exception. 'Participation' exercises are frequently undertaken without any
explicit recognition of the need to consult African women, even when they
perform the primary task or activity in which change is being sought or
undertaken. A glance at the World Bank participation source book (1996) will
show that despite the many highly aesthetic pictures of women shown there,
there is no systematic practice of gender representation required or recorded
within World Bank protocols. If leading donors are slow to embrace the need for
systematic protocols in equitable gender representation, then both research and
operational practice are bound to falter. But does the absence of equitable
gender representation matter to operational outcomes? It clearly does: when men
only focus groups are consulted in Africa, household water transportation
issues have a low priority; when women only focus groups are consulted in
Africa, household water transportation issues develop a primacy. Why?
Typically, it is the women who bear the burden of transporting the water.
If there are systematic gender differences in taskloads, transport burdens and
time and scheduling pressures in the conduct of African agriculture, then these
require explicit incorporation in survey research, policy formulation and
operational and implementation procedures. The evidence is clear that there are
such differences and attention must now be given to the ways in which the
existing deficiencies can be systematically and strategically corrected. Jean
Louis Sarbib, Vice president of the Africa region of the World Bank, has
publicly called for greater awareness and sensitisation to the gender issues of
African agriculture (see the SPAAR web
site) - this call has yet to be met by significant institutional action. Let's
move to thinking about how such systematic representation might be
accomplished.
5. Participation practices and protocols: meeting the gender standard
From the existing evidence, we know that there are gender differentiations of
substantial significance within African agriculture. We also know that the
concept of the unified household beloved of Western survey 'experts' is not
appropriate for Africa. Yet we see the continuance of a household survey
tradition which does not seek to record the separation of male and female
income and expenditure streams in accordance despite the anthropological
evidence which demonstrates the urgency of the need for such a change in current
methodological practice. In this way, African female farmers' objective
interests are marginalised by the imported expertise of radically different
cultures.
A first step must surely be to integrate the existing evidence on gender
differentiations in African agriculture and to use this material to shape
appropriate research instruments for use in extensive gender needs assessment
exercises within African agriculture. Not to do this fails both technical tests
of expertise (the fit of theory with practical reality) and fails the needs of
African female farmers.
A second step must be to take both research and operational budgets closer to
the female farmers themselves and allow the local scrutiny of the way in which
resources are going to be spent 'in the interests' or 'for the wellbeing of'
locals. Frequently, the rationale for external intervention or resource
endowments is the 'wellbeing of women' without the precise impact of the
intervention on this wellbeing being itself measured or even followed up upon.
Evaluative procedures are weak and currently rarely involve those who are meant
to benefit from the intervention and who in fact often suffer from the
consequences of poorly thought out interventions in local practices.
Agricultural projects often increase the power distance between local women and
local men in favour of local men. Rarely are any attempts made to measure the
power distances which exist at the beginning of a project and those which exist
at the end, however, with appropriate and skilled social science expertise
precisely this type of evaluative exercise could be usefully performed.
By creating direct local access to development resources rather than through
the expensive channelling of resources through expat experts and by providing
for direct local accountability on the use of resources - accountability which
is transparent to donors - major changes could be made that free up scarce
resources for agricultural development in Africa. Creating feedback channels
between all parties in the development equation enables the power equalisation
necessary to the full participation of African female farmers in the economic
benefits of African agriculture. Not to enable such participation holds down
the level of production amongst African female farmers with negative
consequences for the African economy.
Agricultural development is not simply an issue of diffusing the highest
yielding crops but rather is a complex social issue which requires clear and
precise social analysis before either acceptance or diffusion of the new and
more efficient can be put in place. Better understanding of the gender
dimensions of information diffusion and better practices of agricultural
extension and outreach directed at Africa's female farmers are a matter of
urgency for a continent where food security is largely women's responsibility.
The old paradigm is redundant in terms of its operational value: the question
must be what are the barriers to the adoption of the new local gender sensitive
paradigm and how are these most effectively removed.
Resourcing African women for participation in agricultural decision making and
leadership in Africa, given the failure of the expert scientific community over
the last two decades to produce any shift in the operational paradigm,
represents the most appropriate and effective path forward. The virtual
resourcing of African women is a step which must be taken by academics and
development professionals on that road.
References
Apt, N.A., Agyemang-Mensah, N. and Grieco, M. (1998) Maintaining the
momentum of Beijing: the contribution of African gender NGOs.
University of North London Voices in Development Management series, Avebury
Press: Aldershot
Boserup, E. (1970) Women's role in economic development.
London: George Allen Unwin
Bukh, J. (1979) Village women in Ghana. Uppsala, Sweden:
Scandinavian Institute of African Studies
Dey, J. (1981) 'Gambian women: Unequal partners in a rice development project.'
in African women in the development process. ed Nelson, N.
London: Frank Cass.
Duncan, B. (1997) Women in agriculture in Ghana. Friedrich
Ebhart Foundation: Accra
Elson, D. (1991) Male bias in the development process.
Manchester: Manchester University Press
Gladwin, C. (1997) 'Targetting women farmers to increase food production in
Africa', in Sasakawa Global 2000 (1997) Women, agricultural
intensification and household food security. Sasakawa Africa
Association, Mexico City
Gladwin, C. (1992) 'Gendered impacts of fertiliser subsidy removal programs in
Malawi and Cameroon', Agricultural Economics 7: 141-153
Gladwin, C. and Macmillan, D. (1989) 'Is a turnaround possible without helping
African women to farm?' Economic Development and Cultural Change,
37 (2): 345-369
Grieco, M. (1997) 'Beyond the policy table: gender, agriculture and the African
rural household.' in Sasakawa Global 2000 (1997) Women, agricultural
intensification and household food security. Sasakawa Africa
Association, Mexico City
Quisumbing, A., Brown, L., Feldstein, H., Haddad, L. and Pena, C. (1995) Women:
the key to food security. IFPRI: Washington D.C.
Saito, K. and Spurling, D. (1992) Developing agricultural extension for
women farmers. World Bank, Washington D.C.
Sasakawa Global 2000 (1997) Women, agricultural intensification and
household food security. Sasakawa Africa Association, Mexico City
Staudt, K. (1979) Women and participation in rural development: a
framework for project design and policy oriented research. Cornell
University Rural Development Committee: Ithaca, New York
World Bank (1996) Participation source book World Bank:
Washington D.C.
Back
to female farmers.