Africa Gender Innovation Lab

95 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/25446

The Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) conducts impact evaluations of development interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa, seeking to generate evidence on how to close the gender gap in earnings, productivity, assets and agency. The GIL team is currently working on over 50 impact evaluations in 21 countries with the aim of building an evidence base with lessons for the region.

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Combining Safe Spaces with Accompanying Measures: A Solution to Empower Adolescent Girls in Côte d’Ivoire
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-16) Boulhane, Othmane; Boxho, Claire; Cavagnero, Eleonora; Garcia-Meza, Alejandra Mia; Guerrero Horas, Olga; Kanga, Desiré; Karamoko, Djibrilla; Kouacou, Karine; Koussoubé, Estelle; Lemiere, Christophe; Harrit, Margareta Norris; Rouanet, Léa; Traore, Adama; Van Damme, Jozefien
This cluster-randomized trial in Côte d’Ivoire examined multi-sectoral approaches to improving adolescent girls’ empowerment (AGE). Safe spaces offering life skills and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education were assessed alone and combined with livelihood support, male engagement (husbands’ clubs), and community leader involvement. Pairing safe spaces with both husbands’ clubs and community leader engagement had the strongest impacts, improving SRH, economic participation, decision-making, and marriage and childbearing outcomes. Safe spaces alone showed limited effects beyond SRH. Findings highlight the importance of fostering community support for gender norm change and ensuring cohesive messaging and high-quality implementation. Multi-sectoral strategies outperform standalone interventions in advancing AGE across multiple domains.
From Collateral to Cashflow: Expanding Access to Finance for Nigeria’s Female Business Owners
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-15) Gruver, Ariel; Koroknay-Palicz, Tricia; Papineni, Sreelakshmi; Shaikh, Sarmad; Zottel, Siegfried
Women in Nigeria are starting and growing businesses at a remarkable rate offering a vast untapped market for business lending. The World Bank, through its Nigeria Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi), partnered with the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) and two commercial banks in Nigeria – Access Bank and Sterling Bank – to develop innovative credit solutions that expand access to finance for women entrepreneurs. This case study summarizes key lessons from this work, including an initial diagnostic; an assessment of demand for business loans; analysis of SMEs who applied to and/or received Access Bank cashflow loans; and administrative data from Access Bank’s cashflow loan program. Our objective is to provide insights into the successes and challenges of disbursing loans to women-led SMEs (WSMEs) in Nigeria. This research is being conducted in partnership with the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), which is also carrying out an impact evaluation that will capture how cashflow-based lending impacts male- vs female-led firms’ access to credit and business performance.
Breaking the Cycle of Intimate-partner Violence: Harm Reduction by Engaging Men in the Democratic Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-28) Gurbuz Cuneo, Alev; Falb, Kathryn; Kabeya, Rocky; Koussoubé, Estelle; Pierotti, Rachael S.; Vaillant, Julia
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global problem and a widespread issue in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where nationally more than one third of women have reported experiencing physical or sexual violence in the past year (2013-2014 DHS). The Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) tested the effectiveness of the Engaging Men through Accountable Practice (EMAP) program, a male-only discussion group intervention which aimed at preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) and promoting more egalitarian gender relations. EMAP was implemented by the International Rescue Committee (IRC). New analyses of the study data paint a nuanced picture of the impact of the intervention. The authors find that among men who were the most physically violent at baseline, the EMAP program was effective at reducing the probability and severity of IPV perpetration. Although zero violence is a necessary and critical goal when promoting gender equality, these results reinforce the importance of measuring the contribution of policies and programs to reduce IPV’s occurrence, in addition to measuring effects on primary prevention and cessation of violence.
The Effects of Childcare on Women and Children: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Burkina Faso
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-01) Ajayi, Kehinde F.; Dao, Aziz; Koussoube, Estelle
In a randomized evaluation conducted in Burkina Faso, the authors examine whether the provision of affordable childcare services improves both early childhood development and women’s economic empowerment. The authors find robust improvement in child development indicators and suggestive evidence that women’s employment, financial outcomes, and psychosocial well-being improved with access to community based childcare centers. Providing affordable, quality childcare services is a cost-effective intervention that yields high social gains. The childcare centers were self-sufficient, essentially paying for themselves. There are also additional unaccounted social benefits from children’s improved development, which can reduce poverty and improve key socio-economic life outcomes. The findings showcase promising new evidence that the provision of childcare can positively impact both women and children. However, there is still more room for change to influence women’s decision-making agency and partners’ involvement in domestic tasks. The findings also demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the intervention. The childcare centers were not only self-sufficient because they essentially paid for themselves, but also contributed to higher revenue for women who used the childcare centers and the women who were employed as caregivers at the sites.
Finding the Time and Labor to Farm: How Social Dynamics Drive Gender Differences in Agricultural Labor in Southern Nigeria
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03-28) Friedson-Ridenour, Sophia; Gonzalez, Paula; Pierotti, Rachael S.; Olayiwola, Olubukola; Delavallade, Clara
Across Sub-Saharan Africa smallholder farmers depend heavily on manual labor supplied by their households, families, and communities, but women are particularly labor constrained. This research paired a detailed quantitative examination of patterns of gender difference in the allocation of time and agricultural labor with an in-depth qualitative examination of how people explain those patterns. The descriptive findings and resulting conceptual framework can be used to guide future programming and research. In southwestern Nigeria, married women’s time and agricultural labor constraints are rooted in common social expectations that men’s farm plots take priority and that a woman’s own farming should not interfere with the agricultural production managed by her husband. Women access lower quantity and quality of labor because of off-farm commitments, and time constraints around when in the day and when in the season labor is allocated to their farm plots. Overcoming agricultural labor constraints for women farmers, especially married women, may require reimagining the role of women and men’s farms in the household. Several new Africa gender innovation lab studies suggest avenues for future innovations to support women producers.
Locking Crops to Unlock Investment: Experimental Evidence on Warrantage in Burkina Faso
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-09-30) World Bank
Smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa face an array of challenges to realizing higher profits from their agricultural activities, including lack of adequate storage facilities and credit market imperfections. To address these constraints, warrantage, an innovative inventory credit system, offers farmers the opportunity to both store their crop production and access credit simultaneously. In a study in Burkina Faso, a research team worked with 38 villages to look at the impacts of warrantage on a variety of household and agricultural outcomes when given access to storage warehouses in close proximity villages. With additional cash on hand from increased revenues, households with access to the warrantage scheme invested more in education, increased their livestock holdings, and invested more in agricultural inputs for the following year. No impacts were found on food expenditures or on food security indicators. These findings suggest that warrantage systems, when established through trusted community institutions, can positively influence household incomes and farmers’ investment behavior.
Policy Solutions to Close Gender Gaps in the Agriculture Sector in Nigeria
(Washington, DC, 2022-07) World Bank
Substantial gender gaps exist in labor force participation and productivity in the agriculture sector in Nigeria. Closing the gender productivity gap in agriculture could lead to sizable gains in the Nigerian economy, boosting gross domestic product. Key factors driving the gender gaps in agriculture include women farmers’ limited use of farm inputs, choice of lowvalue crops, and lower productivity of hired labor. To successfully close gender gaps, policy makers not only need a detailed account of what drives these gaps, but also a rigorous evidence base on cost-effective policy options. This brief offers guidance on interventions that could be adopted to address the underlying constraints faced by women farmers in Nigeria. These recommendations could also meaningfully inform the framework and implementation of the National Gender Policy on Agriculture.
Addressing Gender-Based Occupational Segregation: Experimental Evidence from the Republic of Congo
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-03-01) Gassier, Marine; Pierotti, Rachael Susan; Rouanet, Lea Marie; Traore, Lacina; Rouanet, Léa
Gender-based occupational segregation - the fact that men and women are typically concentrated in different occupations and economic sectors - contributes to gender gaps in earnings. In an experiment in the Republic of Congo, the authors examine whether addressing informational constraints around returns from male dominated sectors can encourage young women to apply for training in more profitable male-dominated sectors. There is high potential for interventions that pair information on returns and trade exposure. However, there are gender gaps in access to early opportunities, mainly relevant technical experience and network connections. Providing information on earnings is a low-cost intervention that can encourage young women to crossover to more lucrative trades, thereby reducing the gender gap in earnings.
Fostering Gender-Transformative Change in Sustainable Forest Management: A Case Study of DGM Ghana
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Canpolat, Ezgi; Shakirova, Meerim; McElhinny, Vince; Westerman, Kame; Cruz, Alli; Buppert, Theresa
The US5.5 million dollars DGM Ghana country project focuses on strengthening knowledge and practices of targeted local communities in REDD+ processes and sustainable forest management. In implementation since 2018, with 212 subprojects either in implementation or completed, there are ample opportunities for detailed examination of specific subprojects. This can offer insight the issue of whether, and how, DGM projects are influencing women’s participation and leadership on the ground and provide some indication of the extent to which the project may be influencing broader social and gender norms at the community or regional level. This case study provides primary information to supplement and inform the DGM Gender Study, which seeks to analyze the contribution of the DGM project to promoting women’s economic achievement, access to and control over productive assets, voice, and agency. The US5.5 million dollars DGM Ghana country project focuses on strengthening knowledge and practices of targeted local communities in REDD+ processes and sustainable forest management. In implementation since 2018, with 212 subprojects either in implementation or completed, there are ample opportunities for detailed examination of specific subprojects. This can offer insight the issue of whether, and how, DGM projects are influencing women’s participation and leadership on the ground, and provide some indication of the extent to which the project may be influencing broader social and gender norms at the community or regional level. This case study provides primary information to supplement and inform the DGM Gender Study, which seeks to analyze the contribution of the DGM project to promoting women’s economic achievement, access to and control over productive assets, voice, and agency.
Tell Us How We are Doing: Motivating Teams Through Feedback Versus Public Recognition
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Delavallade, Clara
Motivating service providers to improve the quality of public service delivery is a major development challenge across the globe. This is particularly relevant for women, who are over-represented as providers of essential public services such as healthcare and education in Africa. In the context of a national school nutrition program in the Western Cape province of South Africa, the authors offered either private feedback or public recognition to female school-feeding teams to examine the effectiveness of different incentives schemes when financial rewards are not available. Receiving private feedback on performance boosted workers’ effort more than public recognition. These results suggest that providing performance feedback can be an effective policy for motivating female teams and improving service delivery, more so than mechanisms leveraging public image.