IDE Canada

Published purpose

Her Time to Grow is a multi-country project aimed at reducing poverty and empowering women through agricultural value chains. This four-year project has two key features: 1) An intensive, in-country focus on three different markets in sub-Saharan Africa – the Southwest Shewa Zone in Ethiopia, northern and central Ghana, and the Copperbelt and Central provinces in Zambia – with an aim to achieve significant gains in women’s economic empowerment in these divergent contexts. 2) A global knowledge-sharing and results acceleration component, comprised of semi-annual “shallow dives” to monitor project progress, test assumptions and course-correct; semi-annual “innovation accelerators” that bring together key personnel from iDE’s work in agriculture around the globe for synergistic strategy development and tactical response; and an imperative to develop and catalyze the application of new innovative approaches that accelerate impact for women far beyond the scope of this project. This project takes a bottom-up and top-down approach to empowering women. From the bottom-up perspective, it will build skills and structures that enable women to plug into existing economic opportunities, and will work to shift the social norms that can help or hinder their success (intermediate outcome 1100). From the top-down perspective, it will bring new market opportunities within reach by reducing gender-specific barriers to accessing them (intermediate outcome 1200). As a result, we anticipate achieving enhanced economic empowerment, well-being and inclusive growth for women in Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia. The design of this project is intended to leverage impact far beyond the life and geographic focus areas of this project. By broadening the application of innovations generated through this project (intermediate outcome 1300), we aim to make a meaningful contribution to women’s empowerment not only for the women in the countries this project is focusing on, but for women around the globe.