Developing Strategies for Change for Women in African Horticulture

Our project ‘Developing Strategies for Change in East African Horticulture’ came to an end in March 2011. Whilst this may not be the end of work with horticulture workers (future funding efforts permitting), it is now time to evaluate the contribution that this work has made to the changing lives of women workers that have been involved in the project.

With this in mind, women leaders from our partner organisations from Uganda (the Uganda Workers Education Association), Tanzania (the Tanzanian Plantation and Agricultural Workers’ Union) and Ethiopia (the National Federation of Farm, Plantation, Fishery and Agro-Industry Trade Unions) gathered in Ethiopia for the first stage of our end of project evaluation. Women workers and organisers also attended the meeting which took place in Kampala in November 2010. The meeting was facilitated by our Kenyan evaluators Atieno Ndomo and Eve Odete, and by Rachel English of Women Working Worldwide.

The details of progress made will be published in our end of project report and the findings of the evaluation. However our partners reported the following:

• Training programmes have led to huge increases in the number of women joining unions.
• In turn, gender-sensitive, sector-level collective bargaining agreements (CBA’s) have or are being negotiated in Tanzania and Uganda, and several CBAs have been negotiated at farm level in Ethiopia.
• This has led to significant improvement across several labour rights including number of workers with permanent contracts, wage, terms of employment, health and safety, working hours and annual, sick and maternity leave.
• The number of women’s committees and women leaders at branch level has also increased and as such issues such as maternity leave, sexual harassment and women’s reproductive health are being more openly discussed on the farms.

Whilst the progress that has been made in these countries has far exceeded our expectations, there are still outstanding issues. These include:

• very low wages,
• lack of policies on gender and to combat sexual harassment
• a need for more women’s committees to tackle outstanding reproductive health issues
• Some farms still not organized or covered by a CBA – until all farms are covered workers will not be satisfied.

Action research reports have been produced by our partners in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. You can download the executive summary of these reports here:

Action research report on Workers’ conditions and industrial relations in the Ethiopia horticulture sectors (Executive Summary)

Action research report: Factors affecting labor conditions in horticulture industry in Tanzania (Executive Summary)

Developing strategies for change for women workers in African horticulture: the case of Uganda (Executive Summary)

To view the full version of the research reports go to our publications page.

Over the next few months we hope to produce an overview of the research findings. This will be followed by an end of project report. Advocacy work continues in the three partner countries and in the UK.