Building Competitiveness in Africa’s Agriculture: A Guide to Value Chain Concepts and Applications

This Handbook presents the “Integrating Gender Issues into Agricultural Value Chains” (INGIA-VC) approach. It was developed to bring together concepts from different technical areas in development, specifically gender, agriculture, microenterprise development, and value chains. Written by gender practitioners, it provides readers with an understanding of agricultural value chains from a gender perspective. The Handbook helps practitioners become familiar with:

• How gender issues affect agricultural value chains.
• A process for analyzing gender issues in agricultural value chains.
• Strategies for addressing gender issues in agricultural value chains.

The Handbook covers conceptual and practical issues for addressing gender in agricultural value chains. Because it brings together several different technical areas, it has multiple audiences from gender, agriculture, or value chain backgrounds. The Handbook was primarily written for a USAID audience, including staff located in Bureaus or Missions, and USAID implementing partner organizations.

Other non-USAID readers may also find it useful as they approach the subject of gender and value chains, but they should be aware that the particular content provided in the Handbook reflects the specific interests of USAID and therefore may not encompass the full range of issues of interest to them.

The writers assume that readers using this Handbook will have some knowledge of gender issues, agriculture, or value chain development. Nonetheless, it places greater emphasis on providing readers formerly unfamiliar with gender issues with a foundation and process for assessing agricultural value chains from a gender perspective.