Designing gender-smart agricultural advisory services: examining evidence from ethiopia, india and uganda

Abstract

Women in developing countries account for over 43% of the agricultural labor force, but only receive 5% of available training and advisory services. Extension agents not only fail to reach women farmers, but too often they also fail to deliver contextual, relevant and actionable agronomic advice that meets women’s needs, further widening the gender knowledge, adoption and productivity gaps in agriculture. Digital Green has successfully partnered to create farmerto-farmer community videos, engaging thousands of extension workers and reaching 4.1 million farmers, 70% of whom are women. In this session, Digital Green will share a three-pronged model for developing and delivering gender-smart advisory services tailored to meet the unique needs and constraints of women farmers. We will showcase how to use the model through case studies, drawing evidence from three randomized control trials conducted in India, Ethiopia and Uganda. We will share lessons on how to design holistic approaches that enhance women farmers’ knowledge, build their agency to adopt new practices, and increase their yield and productivity. We will also explore two new promising pathways for making extension services more participatory and demand driven: digitizing farmer and extension agent profiles and deploying AI-enabled chatbots that triage, inform and better curate content for female farmers’ needs. The gender-smart advisory model presented is an actionable tool for NGOs, tech companies, government and private sector actors working to enable extension networks to more effectively reach, benefit and empower women farmers.