Prioritizing options for women’s empowerment and resilience in food tree value chains in Malawi (POWER)

This project focuses on diversifying smallholder farming systems by scaling up the production and marketing of high-value food trees (improved fruits and macadamias) to address structural conditions and inequalities in rural Malawi. It will develop and test interventions and devise policy options to enhance women’s engagement and empowerment using a collaborative approach among public and private sector and NGO partners. It will apply a recently developed tool to measure women’s empowerment, known as Pro-WEAI, to enhance understanding of the power dynamics that affect participation and access to benefits within households, communities, and value chains, as well as the norms that underlie these dynamics. It will also provide guidelines, community training, communications materials, and policy briefs to support ongoing implementation of the policies and interventions.

This project is expected to result in multiple benefits, including enhanced and diversified household income, improved nutrition, carbon sequestration, water cycling, and soil erosion control. Viable opportunities to support women’s economic-empowerment processes at different levels, as well as scalable interventions to capitalize on these opportunities, will be identified.