Curtains fall on Women Economic Empowerment through Climate Smart Agriculture
FAO in partnership with UN Women through funding from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) jointly implemented a four-year Gender-Responsive Climate Smart Agriculture Project in collaboration with the County Governments of Kitui, Laikipia, and West Pokot. The project entitled - “Economic Empowerment of Women through Climate Smart Agriculture 2020-2023”. The goal of the project was to increase investments in women’s capacities to ensure more equitable access to assets and productive resources.
Through the project, women have been empowered to engage in Climate Smart Agricultural techniques. The project ended in June 2024 with plans already in the pipeline for a second phase. For continued growth, all the stakeholders, participants and implementers had closure workshops.
The closure workshops brought together the implementing teams from FAO, UN Women, Village Enterprise, Hand in Hand, Anglican Development Services Eastern and respective County Governments of West Pokot, Kitui and Laikipia and selected value chain actors from private and public sector together with farmer representatives from project beneficiary groups. During the closure workshops, the participants shared experiences, lessons learned and challenges.
Value chains targeted and milestones
Among the value chains promoted was Galla meat goat production, apiculture, green grams, Poultry and Horticulture in Kitui. Bulb onion, Galla goat, Dorper sheep, Honey aggregation and processing, Poultry, Nyota bean and Pasture production in West Pokot and Laikipia. The project benefited over 2,400 direct beneficiaries and impacting over 14,000 indirectly with over 80% women representation.
Key milestones noted during project implementation include increased productive capacity, increased incomes, strengthened farmer input and market access, improved household nutrition attributed to diversification of agricultural enterprises and strengthened partnerships with other projects including government programmes.
Lessons learned in phase I
Several lessons were learnt, and the gains demonstrated by WEE-CSA on expanding adoption of climate smart technologies and practices reveal that climate smart technologies are important in addressing the crops and livestock productivity, generating incomes for the households and in empowering women economically.
The adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture has a positive impact on reducing household food insecurity, extension services, access to climate change information, credit services and market information play an important role in adoption and mediating the impact of adoption of climate smart technologies. Continued promotion of CSA on gender perspective increases the awareness of the need to develop policies and budget to mitigate and address negative impact of climate change and empower women economically.
A joint UN project
In this project, the UNW took lead on the component of women empowerment, FAO provided knowledge and great expertise on food and nutrition security among the vulnerable population in these counties to achieve food and nutrition security at the household level despite the economic and climatic challenges. The project was funded by Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).