From March 29 – April 1, 2016, the African Growth and Development Policy Modeling Consortium (AGRODEP) hosted a two-part training course on Tools for Value Chain Analysis. The course was conducted as part of AGRODEP’s Tools for Value Chain Analysis Virtual Hub and had support from the CGIAR Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM). The aim of the course was to strengthen regional capacity for value chain analysis using two tools: the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA).
The course was held at the IFPRI offices in Dakar and was attended by 12 members of AGRODEP’s Value Chain Analysis Group. The first part of the course, taught by Hazel Malapit of IFPRI, focused on the WEAI, the first comprehensive and standardized tool to directly measure women’s empowerment and inclusion in agriculture. The course covered the conceptual underpinnings of WEAI, its development, and the tool’s relevance to value chain analysis as a tool for measuring and tracking the intended and unintended impacts of interventions on women’s empowerment.
As part of the WEAI training, participants interviewed their colleagues using sections of the WEAI survey questions and conducted Stata exercises on the construction of the WEAI index from country-level survey results. The instructor also presented examples from several countries including Bangladesh, Ghana, and Nepal of how the WEAI can be used to analyze gaps in women’s empowerment in different socio-cultural contexts.
The second part of the course, taught by Sarah Mayanja of the International Potato Center (CIP) in Uganda, focused on the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA), a flexible R&D approach that brings together key stakeholders including farmers, market agents, researchers, and other service providers to improve the participation of small-scale producers in agricultural value chains and markets.
Aside from a review of the key concepts of PMCA, the training also included a discussion of gender-mainstreaming in value chain analysis in general and in the PMCA specifically; this included an example of gender-sensitive mapping for the sweet potato value chain in Uganda. Participants also engaged in a Rapid Market Appraisal exercise in which they visited a local supermarket, conducted interviews, and performed a SWOT analysis to determine the commercial potential of introducing a new product into the market. The instructor also presented examples of PMCA use from Peru, Uganda, and Indonesia.
The two-part course was very well received overall. Aside from acknowledging the relevance of the course in illustrating the importance of accounting for gender in value chain analysis, the participants expressed appreciation that the course featured specific examples of how these tools were used to analyze value chains within Africa.
The AGRODEP Training Course program began in 2012. The program offers a series of annual courses exclusively to AGRODEP members regarding the latest economic modeling techniques and topics. AGRODEP is an initiative led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and aims to position African experts to take a leading role in both the study of strategic development questions facing the region as a whole and the broader agricultural growth and policy debate.