Gender and access to cowpea innovations in West Africa: a review of some critical issues

Cowpea provides food and incomes to farm households including women farmers who make and sell snack foods from this nutritious legume in West Africa. Gender roles are important in cowpea value chains. The main constraints reported by women are poor access to cowpea innovations, opportunities, and related capacity building. The overall objective of this paper is to review key constraints and opportunities for an effective inclusion of women in cowpea value chains through access to innovations using a genderdisaggregated database and other information. The study uses a sample of 549 producers including women across Mali, Niger, and Nigeria in West Africa. Cowpea baseline survey results showed that the proportion of men as head of household is slightly higher than women. In northern Nigeria, men would grow cowpea for incomes and then food while women would grow cowpea for home consumption and feed for small ruminants. Feed and grains are provided by dual-purpose cowpea varieties whose adoption is constrained by insect attacks both in the field and in storage, drought, nematodes, and the lack of effective seed supply systems. In Nigeria there were no significance differences between men and women for access to inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides, but access to seeds and agricultural equipment for women was limited because men have to finish plowing their land before helping women . In Mali, women use storage technologies, particularly solar drying because they often do not have access to storage insecticides. In all the countries most of the women farmers do not have control over their productive assets and on-farm incomes. Women farmers reported the need for credit to purchase seeds in all the countries and contribute mostly to farming activities like threshing, variety choice storage, and marketing in Mali and Niger

Management lessons learned in supply chain development: the experience of PICS bags in West and Central Africa

In order to facilitate the transformation of African agriculture, Africa’s smallholders will require more and better access to input markets that deliver context-specific and well adapted innovations. This article summarizes the management lessons learned in developing supply chains for Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags in West and Central Africa. PICS bags are hermetic grain storage bags that are leading a revolution in the post-harvest handling of grain on smallholder farmers in Africa. The bags have been very popular with farmers, but the major challenge has been developing supply chains to make those bags available for purchase at the village level. This article: (1) describes the PICS supply chain in West and Central Africa; (2) identifies constraints (i.e. financial, structural, social) that impede the development of the PICS supply chain; and (3) analyzes strategies used by businesses to expand distribution channels and increase bag sales