Often, livelihoods projects in smallholder-based supply chains – such as tea or cocoa – aim to create solutions that benefit all links in the chain: by addressing a challenge in the supply chain (e.g. crop productivity or quality) the projects aim to improve conditions for smallholder farmers (e.g. increased income) as well as for the buyers and commercial partners (e.g. improved quality or security of supply). But demonstrating this ‘win-win’ can be challenging as monitoring and evaluation systems need to be designed in a way that captures the benefits …
Working with companies on women’s economic empowerment in value chains
Salimata Kone (pictured) is a cocoa farmer and lives with her husband and children near Divo, a city in southern Côte d’Ivoire. She took part in a project to improve her family income and financial resilience through crop diversification, producing other crops alongside her cocoa harvest. Through the project, Salimata not only managed to increase her family’s income by harvesting more than 450kg of …
3 ways Coronavirus is having an impact on small producers and how to build back better
The Coronavirus is raging around the world. While many countries have started easing lockdowns, others still have restrictions in place or had to re-introduce measures because of renewed outbreaks. For the foreseeable future, the impacts on economic activity are huge. Oxfam works with women and men small and medium-sized farmers, producers and enterprises in agricultural value chains around the world, …
Cocoa and the global goals: accelerating women’s empowerment
How can business build gender equality into supply chains? Oxfam’s Ulrike Joras and Gaël Lescornec of the World Cocoa Foundation, share lessons from the cocoa industry and introduce a new shared initiative. From South Africa to Somalia, we have both spent over a decade working on issues related to poverty and inequality. While this work has often generated more questions …