Livestock have strong empowerment potential, particularly for women. They offer millions of women in the Global South the opportunity to provide protein-rich foods for home consumption and sale. Livestock provide women with income and opportunities to expand their livelihood portfolios and can strengthen women’s decision-making power. Fully realizing livestock’s empowerment potential for women is necessary for sustainable livestock development. It requires, though, that gender-equitable dynamics and norms are supported in rural communities.

Local banks, NGOs and public institutions worked closely to ensure that women could access loans, join associations and have their voices be heard in collective decision-making processes. It also allowed these women and their communities to make collective investments that would increase their production, stabilize and diversify their nutrition, and ultimately achieve a better life.

Now the journey takes Alphonsine 30 minutes. She and other rural women now have access to clean water to irrigate their crops and to use at home. With the cooperation of the UN's joint project 'Rural Women Economic Empowerment '(Rwee), implememted by four UN agencies, FAO built a spring catchment tap for the Nkabikorera Cooperative in the Ngoma district which significantly decreased the amount of time to collect water for nine surrounding villages.

Learn about the Women’s Empowerment Farmer Business Schools (WE-FBS) implemented in Kenya through FAO’s Flexible Multi-Partner Mechanism (FMM). The approach prompts men and women to reflect critically on their roles, resources, and activities in farming, and to develop strategies that are needed to maximize their commercial potential.

This event launches a new phase of the JP RWEE that will even further enhance its holistic approach to advancing rural women’s economic empowerment by integrating a climate resilience lens to tackle deep rooted social norms which limit women’s participation and leadership in rural communities including through applying gender transformative approaches.

This event, co-organised by the UfM, FAO Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa (FAO RNE) and CIHEAM, aims to raise awareness on the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change on agri-food systems, and on the interventions that are needed to address them, build women and girls’ resilience, and unleash their potential to mitigate climate change and adapt to its impacts.

Many countries are facing growing levels of food insecurity, reversing years of development gains, and threatening the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Even before COVID-19 reduced incomes and disrupted supply chains, chronic and acute hunger were on the rise due to various factors, including conflict, socio-economic conditions, natural hazards, climate change and pests.

ICARDA scientists along with CGIAR LIVESTOCK developed a cloud-based genetic database platform to boost breed improvement programs in community-based livestock breeding programs in Ethiopia.