Domianah Mwikali struggles with high food prices in Mukuru, Nairobi

A new era of high and volatile food prices goes beyond affecting what people can afford to eat and is causing life-changing shifts in society, experts warn today.

The report, Squeezed: Life in a time of food price volatility, reveals a global snap-shot of how the failure of wages to keep pace with five years of food price rises is putting a strain on families, communities and society, including increased levels of domestic violence and alcohol and drug abuse. Roles and social needs are changing as women who once remained at home are entering the job market and agricultural jobs are being abandoned for more lucrative jobs in an attempt to afford higher food prices.

The research is from international development agency Oxfam and research charity the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and is the first of four annual reports which will assess the wider implications of high food prices and volatility in 23 urban and rural communities in ten countries: Bolivia, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

In pictures: Portraits from Kenya – how people are affected by volatile food prices

Oxfam’s policy researcher Richard King said: “Poor people across the globe are feeling the strain in this era of high and volatile food prices. The implications go way beyond the dinner table and are driving social change that must be better understood and addressed if communities are going to survive intact.”

Research findings include:

• Food safety is a growing concern as families are forced to turn to cheaper, poor quality and sometimes contaminated food to stretch the budget.
• Increased migration as people leave rural homes for the city or other countries for more economic opportunities. In Ethiopia, where a sharp rise in the price of staple foods such as teff was recorded, high food prices were blamed for an increase in women moving to the Middle East to find work.
• A knock-on effect on education. In Kenya a rise in food prices left some families struggling to afford school fees. In Ethiopia, young women reported spending more time working to support their families, leaving less time for school
• Heightened family tensions are revealed in increased incidences of domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse as men struggle to fulfil their traditional role as the ‘breadwinner’. In Kenya concerns were raised about men turning to alcohol.
• Unpredictable profits and higher costs mean a new generation of farmers are turning to riskier occupations, including gold mining in Burkina Faso and jungle fishing in Bangladesh.
• Community life is breaking down as families cut back on important community events such as weddings and funerals in an effort to save money.
• High food prices are exacerbating changes in community labour systems. In Ethiopia, traditional “labour-share” systems where neighbours help with work and a large communal meal is provided are increasingly replaced by wage labour.
• With the squeeze on family budgets women are entering the waged workforce in ever greater numbers and grandparents and older daughters are forced to step in to help with childcare

Sara Damalogu, a farmer in Lango Baya, Kenya, struggles to put her kids through school

Naomi Hossain, IDS research fellow, said: “As families increasingly struggle to earn enough to eat we are seeing how money is becoming more important than relationships, to the point that the social implications are potentially alarming. Policy-makers need to catch up.”

The report shows the human cost of high and volatile food prices in a world where one in eight people around the world already go to bed hungry. Oxfam is a member of the 180-member Enough Food For Everyone If coalition, which is calling on G8 leaders meeting next month in Northern Ireland to take action to tackle global hunger.

The ground-breaking research comes in a new era of high and volatile food prices since the global food crisis in 2008. Food prices remain extremely high and volatile and it is the world’s poorest people, who spend up to 80 per cent of their incomes on food, who are hardest hit.

Recommendations include improved social protection policies to address the vulnerability of the poorest, including cash transfers or subsidies. Improved management of food reserves and regulation of the international grain trade is also needed, while steps to make agriculture a more credible vocation by investing in training, technology and sustainability should also be taken. Recognition of the need to design and support a growing number of child-carers, particularly grandparents and older daughters, whose health and education may suffer, is also needed.

Governments and aid agencies have to tackle the politics and power at the heart of the increasing effects of climate change, rising inequality and people’s vulnerability to disasters according to a new report published today by international agency Oxfam.

The report, No Accident: Resilience and the inequality of risk, shows that the risk of disaster is being dumped on to millions of people living in poverty while the lifestyles of the rich world relentlessly pumps carbon into the atmosphere. And while in the rich world the majority of people can cope relatively well with unexpected shocks, most people in poor countries cannot. Some 90 per cent of workers in least developed countries have no social security and 97 per cent of people on low incomes have no insurance cover making them highly vulnerable to disasters, food hikes and or illness – 100 million people fall into poverty just because they have to pay for health care. Women are particularly vulnerable because of their economic, political and social status.

The incidence of extreme weather-related events is increasing and more people are living in places that are susceptible to disasters. Since 1970 the number of people exposed to floods and cyclones has doubled.

“Inequality is driving up poor people’s vulnerability. Vulnerability is not a random twist of fate. Risk is actively being dumped on to people. While rich countries reap the benefits of carbon-spewing economic growth, those in the world’s poorer countries suffer the consequences. Aid can help soften the blow but if we are to tackle the injustice of this we have to deal with the inequality of power and politics that make people vulnerable. That means rich countries reducing the risk of climate change, governments everywhere reducing inequalities and giving poor people a voice in decisions that affect their lives. It also means the aid world changing the way it does business and working more effectively at supporting people to cope better with crises,” said Debbie Hillier author of the report.

The report calls for a fundamental shift both in overcoming emergencies and reducing entrenched poverty. It calls on governments and aid agencies to ensure that efforts to boost economic growth are matched by efforts to manage risk and to reduce inequality – they must go hand in hand. National governments must ensure that their poorest citizens are protected in times of crisis and can access essential services like health and education, funded by more progressive taxation.

The aid world, including Oxfam, also needs to change and end the divide between short term humanitarian work and the long term development work. This will require both a transformation in working culture and much more flexible funding

The report also goes on to say that development work cannot be predominately targeted in largely stable environments. The world is shifting radically. By 2015, half of all people living with less than $1.25 a day will be in fragile states and conflicts, and millions more will face disasters from global economic or environmental changes that seem out of control.

Oxfam says that the aid world’s new focus on ‘resilience’ – building poor people’s ability to cope with crises – is far too much focused on technical fixes and needs to take into account the politics and power that make people vulnerable.

Some “resilience” facts and figures

• For Kenya, resilience-building activities cost on average $1billion a year less than typical late humanitarian response, of the kind that occurred in the drought in 2011.

• 97 per cent of people on low incomes have no insurance cover, and 90 per cent of workers in least developed countries have no social security, which leaves them highly vulnerable to major risk or financial shock.

• 150 million people per year face financial catastrophe because of health costs.

• Although least developed countries contain only 12 per cent of the global population, they accounted for 40 per cent of all casualties related to “natural” disasters during the period 2000–10.

• In 2010, the poorest 20 per cent of the world‟s population accounted for 1.7 per cent of world income; the richest 10 per cent accounted for 54 per cent.

• In West Africa, women farmers produce 80 per cent of basic foodstuffs, but make up only 8 per cent of land-owners and have access to only 10 per cent of available credit.

• If women farmers had the same level of access to resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 per cent, in turn reducing the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17 per cent

• Around 50 per cent of global carbon emissions are generated by just 11 per cent of people.

Yet Africa’s impressive growth is not shared by millions of its people. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to a third of the world’s poorest people, and six of the top 10 most unequal countries in the world. Where income inequality is high, the benefits of economic growth are inaccessible to poor people. Poverty and exclusion are bad for social stability, preventing productive investment and undermining growth itself.

The continent’s potential is also being undermined by illicit capital haemorrhaging out of African countries – often in the form of tax evasion and trade mispricing by multinational oil, gas and mining companies, and in collusion with corrupt elected officials. In 2010, Africa’s oil, gas and mineral exports amounted to $333 billion. But estimates of illicit financial outflows from Africa are up to $200 billion annually, dwarfing the development aid it receives.

Together, income inequalities and illicit capital flows are cheating Africa of its wealth and potential for the investments in education, agriculture and healthcare needed to support productive citizens.

This week in Cape Town, African business and government leaders will meet at the World Economic Forum on Africa. My message to them: For Africa to meet its real potential, you must stand behind the millions being left behind by economic growth. Otherwise, social and economic progress on the continent will be undermined.

The European Union last month agreed a deal on a law that will make oil, gas, mining and logging firms companies declare payments to governments in the countries where they operate. This bolsters similar, recent legislation in the United States under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, and is excellent news. Transparency is a great disinfectant. It will put pressure on governments to account for how they spend money they receive from fees and royalties.

Some African states are making some of the right moves to manage resource wealth responsibly. In Ghana, the Petroleum Revenue Management Act has compelled quarterly disclosures of payments and production figures while in Liberia the voluntary Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has been turned into a binding statutory requirement.

But Africa can’t do it alone. The private sector is the engine of Africa’s economy, and if working responsibly, holds the key to fair and sustainable economic development. Companies’ policies and practices must respect the rights of the people in the countries where they operate. Communities affected by extractive projects must be informed and consulted, and given the opportunity to approve or reject proposed operations.

For their part, Africa’s development partners can deliver aid which will promote good governance, and support civil society to keep their leaders accountable.

We are witnessing a scramble for Africa’s natural resources reminiscent of the period of the industrial revolution in Europe. It is urgent and imperative that policies are in place in each country to protect the rights and interests of African people, most especially those living in poverty. To sustain high growth rates, priority must be placed on forging inclusive policies that ensure that growth is both equitable and sustainable. Much more of the proceeds of the African resource boom need to go directly into education, health and nutrition and improving the productive capacities of the poorest citizens. If not, efforts to boost economic growth in a sustainable way will be undercut.

It is time for a new, fair deal for poor people in Africa, one that gets Africa’s resources working for all its people.

Several African countries are amongst the fastest growing economies in the world[1], boosted by new discoveries of oil, natural gas, and strategic mineral reserves. But progress is being undermined by income inequalities and massive illicit capital outflows – often in the form of tax evasion and trade mispricing by extractive industries.

Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said: “Africa’s impressive growth needs to reach further. The continent’s resource boom must be harnessed to benefit all its citizens. If illicit capital continues to haemorrhage out of African countries, efforts to reduce poverty and boost economic growth will be undercut. Resource wealth should promote prosperity on the continent, not undermine inclusive economic growth, fuel corruption, or damage the environment.”

In 2010, Africa’s oil, gas and mineral exports amounted to $333 billion.[2] But illicit financial outflows from Africa are estimated at up to $200 billion annually,[3] dwarfing the development aid it receives.[4]

Byanyima said: “Too often extractive industries in collusion with corrupt government officials cheat Africa of its wealth and potential for social spending. African citizens must get their true share of extractive industry revenues and royalties paid to their governments.”

Despite being on its way to being a pole for global growth, Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to six of the top 10 most unequal countries in terms of economic disparity.[5] Inequality is bad for social stability, and undermines growth itself. Oxfam calculates that in South Africa, more than a million additional people will be pushed into poverty between 2010 and 2020 unless rapidly growing inequality is addressed.

Byanyima said: “Good progress is being made towards bringing down poverty on the continent, but high inequality and corruption are threatening these gains.”

Oxfam has called for multinational enterprises operating in poor countries to conduct business responsibly by informing and consulting local communities affected by oil, gas and mining projects, and giving them the opportunity to approve or reject a project prior to the commencement of operations.

“Africa is taking control of its own destiny, but to meet its real potential our leaders must stand behind those who growth is leaving behind. Proceeds from the continent’s treasures must be channelled to fighting poverty. Aid to Africa should be used to promote good governance, and supporting civil society to keep their leaders accountable. Until all Africans have the food, education and healthcare they need to be productive citizens, social and economic progress on the continent is going to be held back.”

Note to editors

The European Union last month [April] agreed a deal on a law that will make oil, gas, mining and logging firms companies declare payments to governments, as part of efforts to help fight tax evasion and corruption in resource-rich countries. This comes after legislation passed in the United States under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, requiring oil and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments. The US regulation covers about 1,100 public companies engaged in oil, natural gas or mineral extraction. These are important steps in fighting tax evasion and corruption in resource-rich countries.

[2] Global Witness

[3] United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)

[4] Thabo Mbeki at the launch of the UN Economic Commission on Africa last year said $50bn is exported illegally from Africa every year; according  to Global Financial Integrity, illicit financial flows in the developing world cost in 2010 $859bn, 23,8% of this from Africa, or approximately $204bn.

[5] African Development Bank

Famines are not natural phenomena, they are catastrophic political failures. The world was too slow to respond to stark warnings of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Somalia and people paid with their lives. These deaths could and should have been prevented, and such a shocking death toll must never be allowed to happen again.

Next week world leaders meeting at the Somalia 2013 Conference in London must take steps to ensure that this was Somalia’s last famine. They must invest in long-term development, creating jobs, supporting farmers and pastoralists and ensuring trained, accountable security forces.

It is crucial that women and men from across Somalia are involved in a bottom up process to determine the country’s future. Top down “solutions” don’t work. The country is crying out for just and sustainable peace, and the new Government must grab this moment to secure it.

Read Oxfam and Save the Children’s report on the famine: A Dangerous Delay

We’ve all seen the pictures. Hungry children and long lines of people queuing, while aid workers hand out parcels of food. When people are hungry, they need food and we should feed them. It’s obvious – and it’s been at the heart of our understanding of aid for many years.

But is food aid really the best way? Too often this kind of aid is ineffective, patronising, and doesn’t respect the people it’s supposed to help. We need to rethink how we understand and give aid.

Turkana

Let me take you to Turkana… one of the poorest, driest and most remote parts of Kenya. And it’s getting drier. For five of the past 10 years there has been drought, and in 2011 some parts suffered the lowest rainfall in 60 years. Most people are traditionally pastoralists, moving their herds of cattle across the harsh landscape. Local conflict often flares when water runs out and pasture dries up. Turkana has been economically and politically neglected for decades, making life even harder. It feels like another country – when people from Turkana visit the capital, Nairobi, they talk about “going to Kenya”.

The biggest asset Turkana has is its people – some of the most resilient in the world. You have to be to survive in such an environment.

The face of resilience. A woman in Turkana

Yet, every time there is a drought, people lose their livestock and their entire livelihoods. They are living on the edge of poverty so they have no savings to fall back on. Children get pulled out of school. Men and women abandon their rural homes and head to town to search for work. People can’t afford to buy the food in the markets.

The chronic drought has put people in semi-permanent crisis. People are hungry, so aid agencies distribute food. But the rains fail again, the crisis doesn’t end, so the food distributions continue, and the cycle goes on and on. It’s heartbreaking to see people as strong as this reduced to having to queue for food.

Clearly, we need a new approach.

So we are trying something different. Instead of food, we are giving people cash. To spend or invest however they choose.

Sometimes NGOs distribute cash with conditions – “this money must be spent on school fees, or on buying maize in this shop”. Sometimes we give cash in payment for manual labour – such as digging latrines or improving roads. But for cash transfers to really work they must be unconditional. People should be able to spend the money we give them on whatever they want. No restrictions, no “advice” – it’s entirely up to them.

“Are you crazy??” That was the most common reaction we heard at the beginning. “The poor won’t spend it properly. They’ll buy alcohol instead of food…” “They’ll spend it on jewellery. They will get another wife.” “How can you give them money for nothing?”

But this is how we distribute food, and nobody thinks that’s strange. So why not cash?

It’s our attitudes to poverty that shape how we expect aid to be given. Many of us, the better off, feel that we got where we are through sheer hard work. We simply deserve it. Whereas the poor… well, it’s largely their fault that they are poor – they’re lazy, unintelligent, bad with money…

And because this is what we believe, we feel that it is perfectly alright to take decisions on behalf of the poor – after all, they don’t know what is good for them.

How incredibly patronising!

Women in Turkana

How can any of us be so arrogant as to assume that we know more about what this woman wants and needs than she does? A quick look at the state of Europe’s economy shows it’s not just the poor who can make bad economic decisions. We trust bankers and governments with billions of our Euros, yet we won’t trust a young mother with a few dollars? This cannot be right.

To be poor does not mean you are bad with money. Some of the most innovative and entrepreneurial people I have ever met are still poor. Being poor means not having opportunities, access, or the trust of others. It means fearing for how you are going to put food in your children’s mouths the next day. Giving cash gives choice… hope… power. She can spend it on food if that’s what she needs, but she can also use it to keep her children in school, or to set up a small shop that will earn a profit.

Giving food aid may seem to be the rational solution to hunger, but it can often undermine communities own initiatives to cope with the situation.

Food crises are rarely down to a shortage of food. Often there is food in the markets, but people’s livestock have died, their crops have failed – without their assets they cannot afford to buy food. People go hungry and malnutrition goes up, so food aid is brought in. But the new influx of free food can distort the local markets and ruin the livelihoods of local traders.

I remember meeting a Turkana trader called Joyce. She told me how her business was ruined when tonnes of free food aid were transported into her area and nobody would buy from her.

Delivering food is also a logistical nightmare. Hundreds of trucks loaded with food driving for days across the country. It’s hugely expensive, difficult to organise, and it’s a security risk – food trucks often fall prey to bandits. Countless times people wait in line only to find the food is delayed for days.

There has to be a better way to help people.

A mobile ATM - distributing cash in Turkana

Until recently, delivering cash to remote areas would have been equally if not more difficult. Yet in this day and age you can transfer money at the touch of a screen. Technology is revolutionising the opportunities and potential impact of aid.

The Horn and East Africa is at the technological cutting edge of money transfers. In Somalia companies like Dahabshiil transfer millions of dollars in remittances from the diaspora into parts of Somalia that aid agencies cannot even reach. In Kenya there is M-Pesa, the first mobile money transfer service in the world.

In Turkana we’ve partnered with a local bank. Each month people go to a small shop where they give their fingerprints, input into a hand-held machine, and collect their money. It’s like a mobile ATM. In war-torn parts of Somalia we transfer cash by SMS to small traders and entrepreneurs who need a kickstart. In Uganda we’ve sent cash to Congolese refugees who have lost almost everything they owned as they fled attacks on their villages.

These are some of the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world, with people in all kinds of different situations. If we can transfer cash to these areas then the sky is the limit.

This new approach has brought some big changes:

• It’s more practical, more efficient. There are no large convoys and bulk supplies, so there are far fewer delays and logistical problems than with the food aid.
• It opens new doors. If we use banks to transfer funds then it gets the poorest people a foot into the formal financial system – an opportunity they have never had before. Access to credit, loans, savings… all kinds of financial services that small businesses need to grow.
• It gives choice. Some people do use the money to buy food, but they buy it from local traders. That way the local markets don’t go up or down as a result, and small businesses stay afloat. Others choose to spend it on school fees, keeping their livestock healthy, or as capital to start small market stalls. Whatever they think will help them cope best and climb out of poverty themselves.
• Most importantly, there is a lot more dignity in choosing how to spend the money – something that handouts of aid deprive people of. Some may spend the money on things we consider less important – but so what? Who are we to decide for them?

Once the decision is made to support people with cash, we must leave them to decide what to do with it. The poor use the money in a way that makes sense to them, and we must respect that and resist that temptation to think we know better. Because we don’t.

We need to challenge the traditional preconceptions of aid and be more creative and ambitious in what we can achieve. We must listen to what people actually want. Aid should be about supporting people to realise their ambitions, not just keeping their heads above the water.

On a recent trip to Mali I met Madame Djara, an amazing woman from one of the country’s poorest regions. In less than two years she had taken a grant of $90 and eventually turned it into a thriving clothes business – from which she puts food on the table and puts her children through school.

She had the initiative and the intelligence already. But giving her $90 in cash gave her an opportunity and the power to believe in herself that hundreds of dollars of food aid could never have done.

It’s a harsh environment – a dry landscape with limited water and rocky soil that makes it difficult and expensive to dig latrines. Nevertheless, the ongoing conflict in parts of Somalia means people continue to arrive. About 2,000 people a month come to seek refuge in Hilaweyn and the camp population is expected to reach 40,000 by the end of 2013.

To try and find a sustainable solution to the sanitation problems in the camp, Oxfam introduced an innovative new latrine model – the Urine Diversion Dry Toilet (UDDT). It uses no water, produces less waste, generates fertiliser, and is much more suitable for the harsh, arid conditions.

The new UDDT latrine model

Due to the challenges of digging, the UDDT is constructed on the surface of the ground, with an elevated platform consisting of two chambers. The toilet seat is designed in such a way that the urine is diverted to the outward chamber, while faeces fall into the chamber below. Instead of flushing water like a normal latrine, users put a handful of ash into the faecal chamber. This system enables natural biodegradation of the faeces, turning them into manure over a few months. When the chamber is cleared out the manure is used as fertiliser for tree plantations and small vegetable plots. An agreement was reached with one local company, PWA, to use the fertiliser for seedling nurseries.

The UDDT reduces the volume of human waste and leaves a drier, cleaner, less smelly latrine for people to use. Importantly, it uses zero water – making it ideal for a place like Hilaweyn.

The new toilets were piloted on a few select families who volunteered to try it, and community members were trained to raise awareness of the toilet and its benefits. The results were amazing. An initial evaluation found people appreciated the lack of odour and its easy maintenance. Since then 90 UDDTs have been constructed in the past nine months.

Fatima Mohamed

Fatima Mohamed, one of the community mobilisers in the camp who teaches people how to use and maintain the latrines, told me, “UDDT is very fascinating for me because of its distinctiveness, simplicity and neatness. People have been amazed by the new technology and more families have expressed interest in using them.

“Initially it was challenging to motivate people on maintaining the latrines, but now they understand the value of it,” she said. “Open defecation has stopped. Even the children are educated how to use it. We have to ensure that children don’t put any materials in the faecal chamber, which can close the urine pipes.”

Ambia Abdikebru, a 48 year old refugee who volunteered to test the latrine, says it has made the environment cleaner. She says that people initially regarded the ash as useless, but now see its value. Now people preserve ash at home.

Oxfam now plans to replace all the pit latrines that are getting full with UDDT, and other humanitarian agencies in the camp have shown interest in using the design. The learning from Hilaweyn will be shared wider with the humanitarian community as a sanitation solution in environments where water is very precious and the soil is very hard.

Women bee keepers in Amhara, Ethiopia

“Collective Action” holds great promise for multitudes of women whose primary livelihood is dependent on their ability to farm the land and access markets. An Oxfam research project on Women’s Collective Action (WCA) in Africa has gathered evidence on effective ways for women smallholders to enhance their incomes, asset ownership, and empowerment. One part of the research looked at women honey producers in Ethiopia.

At first glance, the honey sector in Ethiopia appears to be an unlikely place in which to find women forming producer groups, taking leadership positions and benefiting from increased income generation. Especially when many of the participating women are young, unmarried or from marginalised groups.

Beekeeping and honey production are largely male-dominated occupations, partly because harvesting honey from traditional hives requires climbing trees, but also because women’s ability to engage in producing and marketing honey and bee products has been hindered by a lack of necessary assets, such as land and equipment, and limited access to market services and functions, including finance, marketing and technical training.

Working collectively, but not open to all?

Our WCA research gathered evidence on effective ways of organising for women smallholders to enhance their incomes, asset ownership and empowerment. For this project, we used ‘collective action’ to refer to various types of group activity, formal or informal, women-only or mixed, with a purpose of promoting women’s role as agricultural market actors. For example, producer groups, savings and credit groups, or cooperatives.

Honey producers in Ethiopia

We found that working collectively can result in multiple benefits to communities and individuals: improved product quality, yield, prices, and income, social status and leadership skills. So far, so good, but it appeared that not all women were able to benefit equally from participating in collective action groups.

Having free time to attend meetings and carry out group activities, as well as support to cover childcare or household duties are key to enabling women’s participation.

In Mali’s shea sector and Tanzania’s vegetables sector, members of collective groups tend to be older and married, with a correspondingly higher social status than comparable women who are not involved in group activities. Having free time to attend meetings and carry out group activities, as well as support to cover childcare or household duties are key to enabling women’s participation. In order to widen access, NGOs in the Ethiopian honey sector have tailored interventions to prioritise female-headed households and marginalised women.

As a result, younger and unmarried women in Ethiopia have been able to access and benefit from collective action: improved product quality, yield, prices, and income, social status and leadership skills.

So, what made a difference?

A combination of enabling factors created an opportunity for women to start to engage in market activities within the sector:

• Prioritising female-headed households - NGOs identified which women were in most need of support and interventions were then tailored to fit their needs.
• Asset provision and training – to overcome the barriers faced by women lacking in assets and skills, Oxfam and SOS Sahel subsidised the  provision of modern hives and beekeeping training to the prioritised women.  Training in production methods, processing, quality control, and leadership skills both improved the yield and quality of honey, as well as increasing the number of women involved in group activities.
• Women-only spaces – formal mixed groups can often help women to access more profitable markets but also tend to limit their participation and leadership roles. Oxfam helped to organise small informal groups of women honey producers to develop their confidence and skills required to participate meaningfully within larger, mixed cooperatives.
• Rotational leadership in groups - the informal women-only groups practise a system whereby the key positions (chair, secretary and accounts) change every six months and the chairing of regular meetings also rotates each week. This allows women to exercise their leadership skills in a familiar environment before hopefully moving into similar positions in formal, mixed collective action groups.
• Involving men - SOS Sahel conducted a consultation process with the husbands of women who had been selected to receive support, to negotiate around household barriers affecting women’s participation in groups.

This improved the acceptance and legitimacy of the new roles for women in household honey production, and WCA group activities.

Download the full Ethiopia honey sector report

One case in the report is that of Bosena Atnafu.

Women filter honey

Bosena, 40 years old, is seen as one of the most successful women beekeepers in Amhara region. She is a well-respected member of her community and an executive committee member of Meserethiwot honey cooperative. She has succeeded in spite of having had a relatively difficult childhood, never attending school and getting married at an extremely young age (eight years old).

As a married woman, she had to carry out all the traditional duties and responsibilities expected of rural mothers in the region, without much support from her first husband and his family.

Bosena is known for being proactive and adopting new ideas before others in her village. It is because of this quality that she was the first woman sent for training by Oxfam to help form women-only groups in the area. After the training, Bosena was asked to select 20 women from poorer households to join her in establishing a village women-only group, called Serto Madeg. Her selection criteria for membership included trustworthiness, being an active member of the community, readiness to work with others, ownership of at least one beehive, and having enough assets to be able to participate in group activities.

Bosena likes to try new activities and understand how things work. She had already tried beekeeping on her own, before Oxfam’s intervention, and had studied bees’ anatomy and behaviour in detail. During the beekeeping training sessions provided by Oxfam, the trainer asked the group a series of questions that no-one but Bosena could answer. Her knowledge really impressed the trainer, who recommended that she become an executive committee member of the honey cooperative.

Under the rotational leadership model practised by SertoMadeg, Bosena was elected as chairperson for the first six months. The other members believe that the example set by her is the reason why the group is performing better than the other nine groups in the area, and she is seen as a role model for other women in the village. In addition, Bosena has been elected to the executive committee of Meserethiwot cooperative, in recognition of her leadership skills and knowledge of beekeeping. The committee realized that, although she is not literate, she performs very well at representing the interests of women and attracting more women members into the cooperative.

She is the first woman to hold a senior position on the committee, which has broken with the traditional thinking that this kind of position is only for men. Bosena feels she has a very close and supportive relationship with her second husband. He encourages her to go to meetings and even advises other husbands to support their wives in CA group activities. Bosena recognizes that she would not be able to carry out her group roles and responsibilities without his help.

Bosena appreciates the support provided by Oxfam, such as training, encouragement to take on leadership positions, and access to financial support. Oxfam has also provided her with assets, including modern hives and safety equipment. She says that without Oxfam’s support, “I would remain just like any housewife in our village with no information about the external world… I would not attend meetings, let alone lead them… I could only play a very minor role in the beekeeping sector.”

Land grabs are a huge problem for millions of people across Africa. Big land deals are putting people and their possessions out of place, forcing them from the place they call home.

To send a global message about this injustice, thousands of people from 55 countries in five continents sent photos and videos of ordinary things out of place, echoing the displacement of land grabs. Then Coldplay put them to an exclusive version of their song, In My Place. Oxfam now needs you to raise your voices in support of change.

The World Bank influences how land is bought and sold on a global scale. It has the power to step in and play a vital role in stopping land injustice. Now, just before their Spring meetings, tell the World Bank to make good on its word. Let them know the world is watching. Watch the video, share it and tweet @WorldBank now

• Find out how African women are particularly affected by land grabs, in our new briefing paper: Promises, power and poverty: Corporate land deals and rural women in Africa
• Land grabs are a huge problem in Tanzania. Oxfam and local activists recently “sold” some of the country’s most famous landmarks in protest at unfair corporate land deals
  

On sexual violence against women: “We wanted to give a voice to women who have been raped, so they can seek justice and support. In Somalia it’s very difficult to come out and say ‘I got raped’, because of all the stigma and shame involved…”

On the role of women: “(we are teaching women to think) ‘I’m a woman, I can do what I want’ – we are teaching the young generation to come out and be the leaders of tomorrow.”

On government: “It’s very important to have a government, and rule of law – a system that can protect women. We are suffering because we don’t have rule of law. We have to work together to change.”

On youth: “We have young guys who only know how to fight – who doesn’t have any alternative”

On the future: “This is the time to take the lead for young Somalis, to make change, to make a difference for Somalia.”