Women's Economic Empowerment project

General

The overall objective of the project is to advance women’s economic empowerment to ensure the capacity of women to participate in, contribute to and benefit from agricultural value chains and processes in ways that affirm the value of their contributions, respect their dignity, promote equality and equity in eight districts of Eastern, Western, Southern and Central Provinces of Zambia. Specifically, the project seeks to: i) increase women’s agency and decision-making power at household and community levels to address barriers to women’s economic empowerment. ii) Strengthen technical capacity of women to run and own viable, productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural businesses and iii) Strengthen women’s voice and collective power at community level to increase access to, control of and ownership over productive (e.g. physical assets, land) and financial assets among women through women-led cooperatives, land tenure and financial inclusion. This will be achieved through a women-led and women­ centred approach with focus on both men and women. In general, the project will work through study circles, and support women groups, village savings and loans associations with capacity building of women in economic empowerment. The project will start with an eight months inception phase during which several studies will be carried out . These include market analysis, environment and social impact assessment, conflict sensitivity analysis, and a gender and power analysis. The findings from the studies will form the basis for the final design of the project implementation. We Effect, the main agreement partner will implement the project in collaboration with Heifer Project International Zambia (HPIZ), Women for Change (WfC), Zambia Land Alliance (ZLA) and eight District Women Associations (DWAs). The budget for the proposed intervention is SEK 75 Million. The project will run for 44 months including the inception period of 8 months.

Objectives

The overall objective of the intervention is to advance women’s economic empowerment to ensure the capacity of women to participate in, contribute to and benefit from agricultural value chains and processes in ways that affirm the value of their contributions, respect their dignity and promote equality.The project has three specific objectives (SO): SO 1 (personal sphere): To increase women’s agency and decision-making power at household and community level to address barriers to women’s economic empowerment. This specific objective seeks to strengthen women’s capacity, build confidence and self-esteem. SO 2 (relational sphere): To address institutional barriers that limit women’s economic advancement in agricultural value and market chains. This sphere relates to the attitudes and norms of people within women’s lives and the enterprises women may interact with. The objective will work to transform norms, attitudes and values of men, while at the same time support women to develop sustainable and resilient techniques that mitigate the impacts of climate change.  SO 3 (social sphere): To strengthen women’s voice and collective power at community level to increase access to, control and ownership of productive (e.g. physical assets, land) and financial assets among women through women-led local organisations, land tenure and financial inclusion. This objective will seek to support the establishment of women-led local organisations, as well as ensuring that women have more access to financial services including insurance and saving groups. Under this objective, the DWAs and women-led local organisations will be trained to lobby and advocate for increased land rights and secure tenure of fertile land.