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.

General

Pastoralists across East Africa are challenged by loss of land, political conflicts, population increase, economic inequality, and climate change. A transition from pastoralism to agro-pastoralism has been observed in semi-arid areas in response to these challenges. The hypothesis for this project is that the resilience of this transition rests on the capacity to provide secure but still flexible access to land, the so called paradox of pastoralist land tenure.The purpose of this project is to conduct a comparative study of land tenure and capacity for climate adaption in four semi-arid, pastoralist regions in Kenya. The aim is to provide new insights on how pastoralist land tenure can be designed to enable effective adaptation strategies. The four Kenyan case study counties are all dominated by semi-arid land.We identify and categorize land tenure systems and associated practices within these four areas, and map the way land tenure is practiced in these counties through samples of communities in each county. This will enable an evaluation of the marginal valuation of changes in attributes central to household welfare and collective action. The project will use a combination of ecological methods to measure rangeland productivity, combined with interview data on household livestock and milk production, animal breeds and health.We will then synthesize these results to identify pathways towards resilient pastoralist land tenure systems and propose alternative tenure designs.

General

The Dominican Republic is highly vulnerable to climatic events such as sea-level rise and frequent hurricanes that lead to flooding and landslides. In contrast, climate change is resulting in periods of drought with severe effects in certain territories of the country. In addition, there is high exposure to geophysical hazards such as earthquakes, some of them with magnitudes greater than five degrees. In this context, the Dominican Republic requires short- and medium-term actions that integrate measures related to human mobility, such as such as the development and implementation of disaster contingency plans in the short term and the planning and relocation of communities as a medium-term solution, as indicated in the National Development Strategy 2030.This project will contribute to increasing the resilience of communities in risk areas and reducing the vulnerability caused by internal mobility in the face of disasters, environmental degradation and climate change, taking into account the differentiated needs of men, women and vulnerable groups. To meet this objective, a gender-sensitive methodology will be developed to identify, characterise and assess the needs of communities in areas likely to be subject to land-use change and planned relocation (Output 1.1). Furthermore, National, Regional and Municipal Land Management Plans that take into account the relocation of communities in highly vulnerable areas will be developed (Output 1.2). Finally, Provincial Emergency, Contingency and Risk Management Plans for the Provincial Committees of Prevention, Mitigation and Response of two provinces vulnerable to the risk generated by disasters, environmental degradation and climate change will be developed (Output 1.3). As a result, the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development, as the leader of the National Land Management System, will be capable of identifying human settlements in risk areas with relocation needs in the short- or medium-term in accordance with international standards and best practices.

General

This project supports four federal member states in Somalia with land reform initiatives and the integration of land dispute resolution mechanisms. Through high-level capacity building and policy development support, this project strengthens the institutional structures needed to address pressing land issues across Somalia. The project also facilitates and provides support to state and community-led initiatives to promote and provide training on peaceful conflict transformation and rights protection.