What do poverty, climate change, and conflict have in common? They are among the biggest challenges confronting Africa, and they all disproportionately affect women living in poverty or on the margins of society. Research and experience have demonstrated that these women have enormous potential to improve the well-being of their families and communities.
African countries seeking to drive sustainable development — and address the triple challenge of poverty, climate change and conflict — must help women in poverty realize their potential. By investing in and scaling up evidence-backed interventions that increase women’s control over income, ownership of productive assets and decision-making in the household, policymakers could boost human capital, improve gender equality and expand inclusive economic opportunities.
One approach that has been working in several countries is to provide people living in extreme poverty with a productive asset (such as cows, goats or supplies for small-scale trade like a sewing machine), support to meet their basic needs and intensive coaching for a roughly two-year period. Often referred to as the graduation approach, this set of interventions was developed by the Bangladesh-based NGO BRAC (of which I am regional director of Africa for its international arm) to give people the multifaceted “big push” they need to escape poverty and build long-term resilience.
Women, in particular, have benefited greatly from the graduation approach. For starters, there is rigorous evidence that it could increase women’s productivity. In Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, graduation interventions contributed to an increase in women’s off-farm enterprise employment and, thus, the labor supply. In Bangladesh, they significantly increased earnings from women-led income-generating activities. Research has also demonstrated that enabling women in extreme poverty to build sustainable livelihoods could encourage positive behavior changes that help households prepare for and cope with temporary shocks.
Moreover, a multifaceted approach that includes gender-sensitive coaching, life-skills training and community engagement could help women in poverty overcome the psychological and social challenges stemming from gender-based discrimination, social exclusion and limited education. For example, women who received psychosocial support through the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program reported improvements in psychological well-being and social cohesion, as well as a reduction in domestic violence. After a Graduation pilot in Kenya provided women in poverty with mentorship and training (and engaged with male community members to assuage concerns about shifting gender roles), women’s empowerment — as measured by confidence, leadership and local-committee membership — increased significantly.
Such progress in social and economic empowerment has had positive spillover effects. In Kenya, the two-year Rural Entrepreneur Access Program (REAP) — which provided training, mentorship, and asset grants to small groups of women to start businesses — yielded substantial economic benefits for participants and their non-enrolled neighbors. This is partly because REAP increased the value participants placed on economic advancement, which they passed along to other women in their communities.
Recognizing the importance of a big-push approach, several African governments, including Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa, are exploring graduation-style programs and how to incorporate them into existing systems. For example, the government of Rwanda launched a national graduation strategy in 2022 to empower people in more than 900,000 households in poverty to develop sustainable, long-term livelihoods, as part of a broader strategy to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
Another evidence-backed BRAC initiative that shows promise at scale is the Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) model, whereby young women and adolescent girls work with “near peer” mentors who provide training sessions on life skills including reproductive and sexual health, as well as financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
In Uganda, adolescent girls in communities with ELA programs were more likely to earn a livelihood, while their rates of teen pregnancy and early marriage fell sharply. This community-based model has already reached more than 200,000 participants across Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, and it is continuing to expand.
Building on these proven approaches, BRAC, in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation, has devised the Accelerating Impact for Young Women. This five-year program aims to equip adolescent girls and young women with age-appropriate entrepreneurship, employability and life-skills training, as well as the tools they need to start and scale up their own businesses. Last year — the first year of implementation — more than 70,000 participants enrolled in the program in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda, and more than 630 savings groups were formed. Participants have collectively saved US$140,000, and nearly 20,000 of them have received support to start their own livelihoods.
The evidence is clear: investing in marginalized women and girls could lead to transformative change. By embracing proven approaches, African countries could improve their economic future and help build a better world. They already have the resources, the evidence and the technical knowledge. All that is needed is the political will to act.
Rudo Kayombo is regional director of Africa at BRAC International.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been a cornerstone of US foreign policy, advancing not only humanitarian aid but also the US’ strategic interests worldwide. The abrupt dismantling of USAID under US President Donald Trump ‘s administration represents a profound miscalculation with dire consequences for global influence, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. By withdrawing USAID’s presence, Washington is creating a vacuum that China is eager to fill, a shift that will directly weaken Taiwan’s international position while emboldening Beijing’s efforts to isolate Taipei. USAID has been a crucial player in countering China’s global expansion, particularly in regions where
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
With the manipulations of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), it is no surprise that this year’s budget plan would make government operations difficult. The KMT and the TPP passing malicious legislation in the past year has caused public ire to accumulate, with the pressure about to erupt like a volcano. Civic groups have successively backed recall petition drives and public consensus has reached a fever-pitch, with no let up during the long Lunar New Year holiday. The ire has even breached the mindsets of former staunch KMT and TPP supporters. Most Taiwanese have vowed to use
Despite the steady modernization of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the international community is skeptical of its warfare capabilities. Late last month, US think tank RAND Corp published two reports revealing the PLA’s two greatest hurdles: personnel challenges and structural difficulties. The first RAND report, by Jennie W. Wenger, titled Factors Shaping the Future of China’s Military, analyzes the PLA’s obstacles with recruitment, stating that China has long been committed to attracting young talent from top universities to augment the PLA’s modernization needs. However, the plan has two major constraints: demographic changes and the adaptability of the PLA’s military culture.