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
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