Strengthening the resilience and empowerment of women smallholder farmers in Uganda led by Professor Florence Muhanguzi from Makerere University. Rural women in developing countries tend to be poorer than men, produce less from farming and are much more vulnerable to an increasing risk of climate change. The project is testing a comprehensive approach to supporting women to improve their on-farm productivity, increase their resilience to shocks and enhance their overall empowerment. This research builds evidence on what mix of interventions create the most opportunity for women to escape poverty and secure resilience to improve the well-being of their families and communities.
Climate change is having an indelible impact on poverty in Uganda, causing frequent and intensive weather extremes leading to droughts, flooding, landslides, hailstorms and erratic rainfall that have increased rural poverty from 23 percent in 2012 to 25 percent in 2017. Improving agricultural productivity now is critical considering forecasts that poverty will increase even more due to the current COVID-19 pandemic which caused severe disruptions to rural livelihoods, especially among women.
This project contributes directly to a number of USAID and Feed the Future objectives in Uganda. This includes strengthening and achieving a well-nourished population, understanding key drivers of vulnerability, increasing households’ capacity to manage risk and diversifying community and household assets. The project also maintains a strong focus on gender by seeking to empower women by increasing their access to financial resources, improved agricultural practices and reduced vulnerability to agricultural shocks.
National efforts have begun to focus on community-wide rural resilience and on women’s inclusion but separately.[5] This ALL-IN project integrates multiple approaches with a focus on improving women’s livelihoods as well as their empowerment. This research offers a window for policies that effectively address women’s vulnerability to agricultural shocks through interventions that will increase their agricultural productivity, help diversify their incomes and improve the wellbeing of their families.
