Ethical trade in African horticulture - gender, rights and participation. Final report on Zambia study

Abstract

This report describes the implementation of codes of conduct in Zambia's horticultural industry, from a gender perspective. It highlights how gender issues have been overlooked in codes, which is a serious concern since so much of the employment in the industry is female. The report is based on a two year research project that explored the potential for ethical trade in the horticulture industries of Zambia, Kenya and South Africa. This report is organised as follows. In Section 2 the concept of ethical trade is described. Section 3 explains the research methodology. The export horticulture sector in Zambia is then described in Section 4, followed by an overview of ethical trade in the industry in Section 5. Sections 6 and 7 comprise the bulk of the report setting out the perspectives of both producers and workers with respect to codes and working conditions in the sector. Section 8 highlights some underlying issues before making recommendations on ways forward in Section 9. Section 10 concludes the report