Seven women and thirteen men from Anglophone and Francophone Africa and the Caribbean met during the last days of September in Gorée Island, Senegal. They have many things in common, but one in particular is their ability to make innovative connections in gender, agriculture and information and communication technologies (ICTs). This ability has led them to be finalists of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund.

Participants sharing experiences and knowledgeWhat are the issues?

Climate change affects women and men differently in rural Nigeria. While some people are worried about improving irrigation systems to deal with scarce water resources, no one seems to be paying attention to the fact that women must bear an extra weight, as they are responsible for bringing water to the household. This is the kind of issue that Data, from ARDA Nigeria, wants to deal with through interactive radio programmes for rural women. Programmes would consist of radio soap operas that present agricultural issues in a way that speaks to these women. It would then be followed by a question and answer session with an expert, where women can send questions via mobile phones.

In Burkina Faso, when cereals are planted and harvested properly, farmers get better prices in the markets. Most women do more than 80% of the agricultural work in rural areas. If they received proper training, their revenues could increase dramatically. Koritimi, from FEPPASI, has confirmed that with the help of ICT tools, knowledge is acquired faster and is better incorporated into the field. She has also witnessed on many occasions that when rural women learned to manipulate computers to design their own training, their self-esteem increased significantly.

In Uganda, as farmers cannot afford to go to the capital to negotiate good contracts, middle men take the biggest share of the profits. However, thanks to emailing and mobile-phones,a group of maize producers managed to gain a six-month contract with an organisation from Kampala. Johnstone’s organisation, ToroDev, found that women are being left out of this empowering and income-generating process, since only one out of ten has basic access to ICTs.

Thirteen other initiatives from participating countries, such as the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent in the Caribbean; Mali, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and the Congo in Western Africa; Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe in Southern and Eastern Africa were shared in the workshop.

Data, Kortimi, Johnstone and the other people of this diverse and dynamic group exchanged knowledge and experiences in whatever language was at hand, which included not only French, English and Spanish but also drawings, body language and songs. The aim of the workshop was to give finalists training in project formulation, gender issues and gender evaluation, and most importantly, to create a space where everyone could learn from each other. After the workshop finalists were to re-submit their proposals, from which the final fifteen grantees will be selected.

What do we mean by gender?

“Women will only be able to learn how to use ICTs if men are involved in these initiatives as well.” Workshop attendees had to stand on the right if they agreed with this statement and to the left if they did not. Those who neither agreed nor disagreed stayed in the middle. When a participant was asked to justify his opinion he said: “Men are the ones that create the technology, so they must help out when women are trained.” Another participant disagreed: “In some contexts men won’t let their wives or girls participate in training sessions.” Another one said: “But the statement says that women are ONLY able to learn if men are around: This is not true!”

Through games and group discussions, participants engaged in debates on gender, gender roles and women’s empowerment. They received training on Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM), a tool that allows evaluators to determine to which extent ICTs are addressing gender issues and improving women’s lives.

GEM did not provide answers but it did helpe generate useful questions. What are the gender issues at stake? How do we include the women we’re working with not only as beneficiaries but also as active agents of their own change? What is the change that we’re facilitating and how are we going to measure it? How do we make sure that we’re not talking on anyone’s behalf but rather providing people with spaces in which to express their own voices?

The workshop ended with everyone singing and clapping their hands. What were they singing? “Educate a man and you’ll educate a person, educate a woman and you’ll educate a nation.”

The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) Small Grants Fund is delighted to announce that twenty projects have been short-listed as possible GenARDIS grantees.

Geographic and creative diversity

The short-listed proposals come from sixteen countries in Africa and the Caribbean, ranging from the Dominican Republic and St. Vincent on over the Atlantic Ocean to rock-skip throughout western Africa in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Congo. Eastern Africa and Southern Africa also have their share of representation with projects from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Congratulations to the short-listed GenARDIS round 3 candidates

1. Benin, Use of ICTs for popularising agricultural information and building production and management capacity with two groups of women producers and product transformers
2. Burkina Faso, Initiating 30 women in charge of 15 women groups (members of FEPPASI) to computing
3. Cameroon, Promoting the use of ICTs for market information exchange among women producers in Cameroon
4. Democratic Republic of Congo, Creation of a rural women internet-users network using ICTs for the exchange and popularisation of agricultural, pastoral, social, economic and political information
5. Democratic Republic of Congo, Sisters Informing and Supporting Sisters Initiative (SISSI): Increasing the agricultural productivity and profitability through ICT and partnerships in Small-Scale Rural Women Farmers of Uvira
6. Dominican Republic, Empowering women in managing rural cooperatives with relevant ICTs and e-business tools
7. Ethiopia, Women innovators document their own innovation and experimentation in Tigray Region of northern Ethiopia
8. Ghana, eWomen in Development Leadership
9. Ghana, Gender Issues and Women's Livelihoods Improvement Project
10. Kenya, CoreRooms - Computer Science Opportunities and Resources Portal for Kenyan Female University Students
11. Mali, Improvement of agricultural women's access to ICT opportunities in the region of Sikasso
12. Nigeria, Building the ICT capacity of women teachers in a rural community in Nigeria to communicate agricultural information
13. Nigeria, “Majelissa yan Mata Manoma!”: A meeting place for Hausa Women Farmers on FM Radio
14. St. Vincent, Empowering Caribbean Women Farmers Through ICT
15. Tanzania, ICT and women empowerment in crop marketing in Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania
16. Togo, Strengthening rural women's access to ICTs in Kpélé-Akata, where ICTs are understood as tools for economic and community education development
17. Uganda, Increasing Small-Scale Women Farmers’ Revenues in Kabarole and Kyenjojo Districts of Western Uganda by Using Sustainable ICT4D-Enabled Production and Marketing Tools
18. Zambia, ICT Women Co-operative Group
19. Zambia, Promoting the culture of ICT enabled access to agriculture information among Kapiri Rural Women Farmers, and capacity building for SMS-based access to market information service.
20. Zimbabwe, Promoting ICT use for the healthy small scale waste water irrigation of vegetable crops amongst the rural women of Zimbabwe

The breadth, creativity and variety of the short-listed projects demonstrate all what information and communication technologies (ICTs) have to offer to rural development, especially when addressed from a gender perspective. The projects reflect creative ideas rooted in local realities - community radio broadcasts, social networking tools, SMS, email and farmer-run portals. They benefit rural women, small-scale farmers, teachers and students in their quest to increase income, do away with intermediaries, gain access to information, improve natural resource management and influence national policies. They also reflect the vision and hope that these twenty short-listed candidates have for gender equality and rural development.

Next steps

Short-listed candidates will have the opportunity to sharpen their project proposals after attending a week-long capacity-building workshop in Senegal this September. They will receive training on project development, gender planning and evaluation and feedback from jurors regarding their projects. Participants will then refine their proposals and re-submit them for final selection of fifteen GenARDIS round 3 grantees. Each will receive 7,000 Euro.

Geared to understanding and addressing gender issues in ICT for agricultural and rural development in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, the third round of GenARDIS received 231 applications from 39 countries, with over one-third of the submissions coming from Francophone countries.

Experienced jury

The ten-member GenARDIS jury had the tough job of narrowing down so many applicants to the twenty best candidates. Chosen first and foremost for their commitment to GenARDIS, jurors reflect the regional and language diversity that GenARDIS seeks to support, and are experienced in gender, ICTs and agricultural development. In fact, several are past GenARDIS grantees.

Rigorous selection process

GenARDIS’ third round has four phases of selection. In June, an initial screening of the 231 entries narrowed eligible projects down to 115 for the jury's consideration. Judges worked in teams to identify the top fifty-five candidates based on criteria clearly outlined in the call. These proposals were then freshly re-scored by different teams to avoid bias, and obtain the twenty short-listed candidates. Some jury members will mentor candidates during the September GenARDIS kick-off workshop.. The fourth and final selection phase will take place in October, when candidates re-submit their proposals based on lessons learned during the workshop.

The third round of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund got off to a roaring start in June 2008, with over 230 proposals in English and French pouring into the fund's digital inbox. This time around, donor partners took time out to evaluate GenARDIS. They captured advice of past grantees to enrich GenARDIS' already fertile seed grant work with increased capacity building.

Currently, judges are sifting through applications to determine a short-list of twenty projects. Those selected will attend a special "kick-off workshop" where gender planning and evaluation, project development and information and communication technology (ICT) training will take place. Donor partners and experts in the field of gender, ICTs and rural development will accompany the process, providing advice on how to improve proposals and carry out realistic and sustainable project planning. After the kick-off workshop, those short-listed must rewrite their proposals and re-submit a full application. Only fifteen groups will be selected as GenARDIS awardees.

“Even if a group does not get the grant,” observed Jenny Radloff, GenARDIS coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), “the kick-off workshop provides enormous potential for capacity building.” “How many people get personalised feedback from donor partners on their funding proposals?,” she asked. The workshop will also feature training in how to use different web 2.0 tools such as blogs.

The kick-off workshop offers gender training at the onset of the GenARDIS process to ensure that gender isn't just "added on" or understood as synonymous with women, a problem cited by previous grantees. "This is truly how to go about engendering the use of technology," said Joyce Endeley, a GenARDIS judge and professor in agriculture extension and gender studies at the University of Buea, in Cameroon. "Start from conceptualisation and not add on in the middle or end of a project as an afterthought.” Endeley advised. “The process will not only build gender capacity but it makes participants put on a gender lens through the entire project. This should be a lesson for funding bodies and national governments in how to engender development."

Throughout the entire grant process, knowledge sharing between grantees will be emphasized. A final workshop then weaves lessons learned and best practices together, as in previous rounds of GenARDIS. Having two capacity-building workshops, one at the beginning and one at the end, was the direct result of grantee advice in the evaluation process.

"This is what makes GenARDIS so special," comments Angela Marianne Kuga Thas, lead evaluator of the previous two rounds of GenARDIS. "GenARDIS partners are willing to 'go the extra mile' and acknowledge that seed grant programmes cannot be just about providing the funds, but are really about having an integrated approach towards capacity-building from a holistic perspective."

The unique fund began supporting projects in 2003, in an effort to better understand gender implications of emerging ICT use in agricultural and rural settings of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. GenARDIS also aims to inform gender-sensitive local ICT policy for rural and agricultural settings. Several donor partners joined forces to make GenARDIS a reality: the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos), and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD).

Kuga Thas reported that past awardees emphasised the catalytic nature of GenARDIS - in expanding their capacity to influence and persuade, and by generating new interest and efforts to address gender and ICT issues.

"This, I feel, is really what GenARDIS partners should be very proud of - expanding the pool of people who will not only talk about the gender and ICT issues that exist in agricultural and rural settings, but to act on these as well," she concluded.

The GenARDIS grants programme was developed in recognition of the ICT-related constraints and challenges faced by rural women in African,
Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. GenARDIS grantees and honorable mentions gathered in Entebbe, Uganda for a knowledge sharing workshop on gender, agriculture and rural development in the information society in early July. Policy recommendations and lessons learned are summed up by Sylvie Niombo, APC Africa Women's Co-Coordinator.

Approximately 100 participants to the GenARDIS workshop and the conference on Women in the on Women and Science in Food and Nutrition Security, most of them women, have been invited to a field trip in rural areas of Uganda.

La situation est souvent difficile dans les zones touchées par les conflits en Afrique, c’est le cas de Uvira qui se trouve dans la province du Sud Kivu en République Démocratique du Congo. Les femmes ont été les plus touchées par les conflits armés à Uvira en 1996 et en 1998. L’association Arche de l’alliance travaille pour la promotion et la défense des droits de l’homme. Leurs bénéficiaires sont en majorité les femmes économiquement défavorisées et victimes de violences sexuelles.

Une subvention de GenARDIS en 2005 leur a permis de réaliser le projet d’utilisation de campagne d'accompagnement et de sensibilisation des femmes rurales d'Uvira sur la promotion des TIC à des fins de plaidoyer pour le genre.

The workshop on knowledge-sharing on gender, agriculture and rural development in the information society (GenARDIS) started on Monday at the Imperial Resort Beach hotel in Entebbe, Uganda coordinated by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET).

We were impressed by the leadership of Josephine Kizza and her determination to run a small family project on organic farming successfully, when we visited her training centre called St Jude in Masaka on July 05th 2006.

Women who live in rural areas are at a particular disadvantage in the digital world — facing multiple barriers related both to gender and location. Given their central role in the agricultural economy, for example, rural women often have too much work and too little time to become familiar with these new technologies. And with their special responsibilities for children and the elderly, women typically cannot migrate as easily as men to towns and cities where training in the new technologies is more available. Cultural attitudes preventing women from visiting public access points frequented by men — in addition to generally lower levels of education and less political and economic power than their male counterparts — also limit women’s ability to enter the new world of ICTs. Add to this the lack of ICT materials in local languages, and the obstacles seem formidable indeed.
The small grants fund from GenARDIS (Gender and Agricultural/Rural Development in the Information Society) selected 10 projects aimed at breaking down those barriers separating rural women from the benefits of ICTs.
Keane J. Shore offers a snapshot of GenARDIS projects and of how a variety of tools and tactics — for instance, providing access to cellular phones, getting women connected to the Internet, and creating educational video — serve both rural women’s day-to-day needs and the longer-term goal of advancing the position of women within society.