Author(s):Siân Curtis, Aiko Hattori, Jessica Fehringer, Milissa Markiewicz, Mary Lubungu, Amelia Mackenzie
Feed the Future Zambia aims to assist an estimated 263,000 vulnerable Zambian women, children, and family members to escape poverty and hunger. Two mechanisms operating under Feed the Future Zambia are the Production, Finance, & Technology Plus (PROFIT+) project and the Better Life Alliance (BLA) project. PROFIT+ aims to improve smallholder productivity, expand markets and trade, and increase private sector investment in agriculture. The project is targeting 200,000 smallholder farmers in the Eastern Province districts of Chipata, Katete, Lundazi, and Petauke and is focused on the value chains of maize, soybean, sunflower, groundnuts, tomato, and onion. BLA’s goal is to increase sustainable, market-led growth across the entire food production and market chain, resulting in improved food and income security for 40,000 households in selected environmentally sensitive areas in Chipata, Katete, Lundazi, Mambwe, Nyimba, and Petauke districts.
Both mechanisms have adopted a gender mainstreaming approach to maximize positive impact on female farmers, and to prevent women from being displaced from value chains as commercialization increases. The Zambia Gender and Groundnut Value Chains (GNVC) impact evaluation aims to test the hypothesis that the gender interventions implemented by PROFIT+ and BLA will assist in maintaining or increasing women’s control over production, marketing/sales, and proceeds from groundnuts as groundnut commercialization increases. This report presents the results from a baseline survey administered as part the Zambia GNVC impact evaluation, which is being undertaken under the auspices of the Feed the Future FEEDBACK (FTF FEEDBACK) project.
The baseline survey included both quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative survey instrument contained a household questionnaire, as well as individual women’s and men’s questionnaires. The survey was administered in the PROFIT+/BLA project area (project domain) and in a non-project comparison area (comparison domain) within Eastern Province as well as the southern portion of neighboring Chama district. Data collection occurred from August 9 to October 1, 2014. A total of 4,000 households were selected for participation in the study—2,000 in each domain. The main adult (age 18 or over) female decisionmaker in all selected households and the main adult male decisionmaker in a sub-sample of approximately 38 percent of selected households were recruited for interview. Household-level response rates were 98.6 percent and 98.8 percent in the project and comparison domains, respectively. Individual women’s response rates were 98.1 percent (project domain) and 97.7 percent (comparison domain), and individual men’s response rates were 92.3 percent (project domain) and 90.4 percent (comparison domain).
A qualitative component, which aimed to contextualize quantitative findings and explore household gender dynamics, included 36 in depth interviews (IDIs) and 12 focus groups discussions (FGDs) at six sites within the project domain. Data collection occurred from October 23 to November 8, 2014.