Image of a ladies in a market selling farm produce.

Updates. 8/03/2024

We invest in women to accelerate progress

Name: Ripple Effect
Price range: $

By Deogratious Egeru, Regional Enterprise Development & Innovations Coordinator, Ripple Effect

The focus of this year’s International Women’s Day is Invest in women: accelerate progress (as per UN Women guidelines), and the principle of accelerators for driving development is absolutely central to our work at Ripple Effect.

Our programmes are designed so that the progress will be shared: by neighbours sharing with neighbours what they have, and what they have learned. By networks of peer famer trainers taking skills to new communities. By startup enterprises that build opportunities and prosperity. We measure this accelerator effect, and we know that for every family we work with directly, at least another three families will benefit.

Last year 2,470 peer farmers – many of them women – were sharing Ripple Effect’s project work beyond their immediate communities.

Image of a woman bent in a farm that she is working on with her hands.

Fanaye is a widow trained by Ripple Effect in Wolaita, Ethiopia. “We have learned about business skills and value addition, and I sell the produce my family doesn’t eat. As a peer farmer trainer my farm is a demonstration plot and I train other community members and self-help groups.”

1. Women contribute to progress by force of numbers

Women make up 60 percent of the population of the East African Community. If we can empower them to become agents of change we are well on our way to our target of achieving a confident, thriving and sustainable rural Africa.

We certainly can’t achieve the progress that’s needed without them.

In our projects, 67% of all participants are women.

Image of a woman inspecting her cows in a shed.

Josephine a participant from KYOP inspects her dairy enterprise.

Making sure women are included

In the communities where we work, women are not traditionally visible as decision-makers and the entrepreneurs – even though they are doing most of the hard work. (The African Development Bank says that African women work 50% longer hours than men.)

It will most commonly be the men who turn up at community meetings.

“Gender bias remains a pervasive issue, affecting women in all the spheres of their lives. We need to challenge those stereotypes, dismantle discriminatory practices, and create a level playing field.” Slyvia Owino, Ripple Effect Regional Gender and Social Inclusion Coordinator

All our project work – whether the focus is women’s empowerment, or climate mitigation, or enterprise development – starts with our inclusion training. This foundational work challenges traditional attitudes right down to household level: about who does the work, who makes the decisions, and who controls the finances.

Transforming attitudes and expectations

We call the training tool we have developed to do this our Transformative Household Methodology. And it is truly transformative. Without it women would not be emboldened to propose WHICH crops they should be planted, or how the income they have earned should be spent and invested.

Image of a man and a woman standing in a dairy shop showcasing processed milk products.

Mary, a participant in our Kyotera Push Pull project, with her husband Benon in the dairy shop they have set up in Kyotera Uganda. 

At Ripple Effect, we see first-hand how economic empowerment is key to achieving gender equity. When women have financial independence, they can break free of constraining traditional roles. They are less dependent and less vulnerable: they gain a voice and a sense of agency, and begin to stand up for their rights.

2. Women accelerate progress by how they spend their earnings

OECD research shows that women typically invest a higher proportion of their earnings in their families and communities than men.

We see this everyday in our work. When women start to earn an income – by selling some produce to their neighbours, or at a local market – they spend it on their family’s health, and on schooling for their children, and then invest back into their microbusiness (buying more seed, or more chickens, another goat…).

In the long-term there is no stronger driver of economic development than the “education dividend”. Schooling is highly valued in these communities as a way of creating a better life and earning their way out of poverty, and that’s what mothers want for their children.

Image of a woman pushing a bicycle loaded with animal feed.

Josephine, a peer farmer trainer in Kyotera, Uganda, transports feed she has grown for her dairy enterprise. “I want to teach my fellow group members and neighbours this method of growing fodder.” In 2023 one of her daughters was studying nursing and midwifery, and another hoped to join the police.

How we support women entrepreneurs

All businesses start small, and few of the women we work with would have said they had ambitions to become entrepreneurs. First you have to create hope, and a belief that change is possible. We provide mentorship and supportive networks and promote “financial literacy” to empower women economically.

We help to set up village savings and loans schemes that get microbusinesses started, and access to more flexible institutional finance that they need as their businesses grow.

Last year, 44,472 people who were part of Ripple Effect projects were able to save money through local savings and loans groups.
12,822 new businesswomen set up successful agribusinesses in 2022-23.

Join us investing in women

By providing women with skills, resources, and opportunities we empower entire communities.

Together, we can create a world where every woman’s potential is realized and make waves of change that transform lives.

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