So people are still coming in but I'd like to go
ahead and start the the discussion series.
Hello everybody. I'm Dr. Maria Elisa Christie.
I'm at the Center for International Research, Education and Development at Virginia Tech.
Welcome to our Global Development Discussion Series
and thank you to Continuing in Professional Education for co-sponsorship this year.
We're very happy you could all join us for today's discussion featuring Dr. Fridah Mubichi-Kut.
So as of this morning, we had 51 people
registered for today's event, but
we've had a flood of more people registering
since then. But at that time, we
had a lot of folks from Virginia Tech.
And then we also had other U.S.
universities, of course, Cornell,
Marywood University,
University of Minnesota.
And then we had folks particularly from
Ghana and Malawi and Ecuador. So in Ghana,
we had University of Cape Coast in Ghana,
Limonga University of Agriculture and
Natural Resources in Malawi, and the
Universidad de San Francisco de Quito
in Ecuador. So welcome to everyone.
If I did not mention your
country or institution.
So as you saw, those that saw the intro
slides there, this event will be
recorded. So it will be available to you
on our website and on VT Works later.
And for everyone who's staying on,
you're agreeing to being recorded. So if
you don't want your image recorded,
be sure that you turn your camera off.
Okay, just a repeat of some of the brief
housekeeping notes. This will last
approximately 45 minutes. Our speaker's
presentation will be 20 -25 minutes, followed by
about 20 minutes of discussion and Q&A.
and we'll have all the participants muted
to enable the presenter to the speaker to
present without interruption and of course in
order to for the discussion to be as rich
as it can be we ask for everyone to be
respectful and treat all participants with
kindness and consideration so you can post your
questions anytime during the talk in the
chat box because we'll be saving them in a
google doc and i'll be able to read from
there but if you would like at the end of the
talk. If you'd like to ask your question
yourself, you can raise your hand virtually,
and then we'll keep track of the order.
So we'll ask you to speak so we don't
have interruptions and we maintain
netiquette. So if you'd like to enable captions
at the bottom of your Zoom, find the
option More, select it, and select Show
Captions, and you will select English.
what you've been waiting for,
to introduce our speaker.
Dr. Fridah Mubichi-Kut is a Professor of
Practice in Applied Economics and Management
and the Executive Director of the Student
Multidisciplinary Applied Research Team's
SMART program at the Charles H. Dyson School
of Applied Economics and Management at the
Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business.
She's trained first as an international
business administrator and later as a social scientist.
Frida has worked with various
organizations, including former USAID
supported Feed the Future Innovation Labs.
Before joining Cornell University,
she served as Director of Measurement
and Evaluation within a USDA
Agricultural Commodity Research Program.
Frida holds a Ph.D. from the University of
Missouri, an M.A. from Northeastern
University, an M.B .A. from Oklahoma City
University, and an M.S. and B.A. from the United
States International University, Africa.
Her work is focused on understanding the
role of social networks and development
policies and the role that they play in
the uptake of new agricultural technologies,
gender equity and economic progress.
Today, she'll present empirical studies
and engaged learning projects from sub
-Saharan Africa to illustrate how existing
social, economic and technological environments
influence women's entrepreneurship.
So the title of her talk is From Margins to Markets, Women, Technology, and Entrepreneurial Development in Emerging Markets.
Please welcome Dr. Fridah Mubichi-Kut.
Thank you very much.
So it's a pleasure to be here and
to be able to share a little bit
about my work with all of you.
Just absolutely amazing to hear of all the
voices and people who are presented here. So
I hope that my work sheds not just a little
glimpse of what I do, but more importantly,
creates an opportunity for us to have
more of a discussion and share a lot
of our lived experiences, as I'm
sure many of you are here today because
of your interest in this particular field.
So beyond the introduction that has
been gracefully provided by Maria Elisa,
I am going to tell you my story in my own
words because I feel as a social scientist
and as a researcher and someone who actually
teaches field research, it's always good
for us to situate ourselves and be able
to tell people where we come from and why
we apply a certain lens to the things we
do. So I start my story by sharing a little
bit about my roots. And this is a picture
of me and my mother years ago. My mother
has been deceased for over 10 years, a little
too many years to even want to count
but one thing my mother used to tell me was
that if you educate a woman you've educated
a whole village and they honestly never made sense to me.
It never made sense to me because one I was brought up in pretty much what I would call a missionary hospital.
She was a nurse and my biggest playmates
since my siblings were four and five
years younger were the kids who came
to the hospital and so many of them
had malnutrition. They had kwashiorkor.
Sometimes when I mention that to my
students they have no clue what this
malnutrition disease is and no one really
understands how lack of protein
itself really affects one's development
but I struggled with this saying that she
kept on reminding me that you know when you
educate a woman you educate a village and maybe
this is part of why I have really cared
more and more over the years about the women
because I've witnessed them at my childhood
where they would be held hostage for not
being able to have their children's hospital bill paid off.
So that became my first contradiction
of what one of my students decided to
call a TCK. You know I never knew that there
was something as a third culture kid.
This is what you call people who grew up in missionary
households and also away from the original culture.
The other thing that informs my
place in the world is my personal struggle
having grown up both in Kenya and in the U.S.
I always found myself questioning why is
it that we have so many missionaries, so many
volunteers always coming to Africa to try
and fix things, to help, you know, why can't
people do things for themselves in this
wonderful country, you know, this place? Yes,
it may be dry, dusty and all, but it just
never made sense. And over the years, my faculty,
you know, my professors at grad school
would tease me for being so torn on the
questions I asked about, you know, was colonialism
really good or bad? Is capitalism good or
bad? And so I call this a lot of the
contradictions that drive my research and myself.
So as you all heard, I've had more
schooling than I care to admit in public.
But the one thing I would say that
this schooling has finally lent me is a
lens through which I look at my work.
So coming from Missouri, I am, you
know, of the diffusion of innovation
theory, pretty much. So that
is a lens through which drives
a lot of my work. So before I
decided to go back to grad school as
an older person, I was running a non
-profit. And within that nonprofit,
I worked with a lot of cooperatives,
women entrepreneurs,
you know, women groups who were working
on environmental conservation in Kenya.
And I started noticing several trends that
were so similar. Most of these women worked
because they either were grandmothers who
were taking care of grandkids or they were
actually just trying to supplement whatever
little income they had. And as I started,
you know, questioning and trying to apply
a lot of my MBA, I started realizing that
not all that you are taught in school works.
You cannot take your business plan from the
MBA field and basically just place it into
some of the community settings because the
way the enterprises are built are not really
formally as the same stuff that we had in class.
And years later, working within
several of the USAID innovation labs, as well
as working on projects with various governments,
I've come to really start asking myself,
if the business models that we try to
apply, that we teach, don't really work, Then
how are you really going to go ahead and
address this problem that I see, that I've
seen from when I was a young child, of these
hungry kids, these hungry mothers, hostage mothers, hungry fathers, and grandparents?
So this, in many, many ways, does drive a
lot of my work. But that said, coming from
a college of business, I thought it would
be good for us to just also anchor
ourselves on some of the basic statistics that
are out there. Looking at the, you know,
the census, we love to say, show me the
data because the data never lies, right?
But what was surprising as I was getting
caught up with some of the statistics is just
really realizing when I look at the role women
play within the formal business, which is
usually, you know, within the formal sector,
the wage labor, we tend to hear that there
are fewer women than men. But when you try
to think about the gap, some of the statistics
are really off. So, for example, if you
look at North Africa, there are very few women
who are participating in any form of
employment. But if you look at the case of, say,
you know, sub-Saharan Africa versus the
rest of the world, what you start seeing
is that women, you know, in sub-Saharan Africa are actually really doing well.
There are about 64% women who are being
reported to be within the formal employment
sector versus 47% across the whole world.
That is pretty impressive when you think
about where the men are, because the men
in sub-Sahara Africa are about 77% compared
to the rest of the world at 72%. Now,
this data comes from about 2023, but when
you think about the factors like COVID that
have gone through, I don't think we're
going to see much of a bigger difference.
And some of the other things that we know
to date, you know, as we look at development
is that we know most of the enterprises
that are really being led, that are employing
these women, that we are also counting,
tend to be informal. And where are they? So,
for example, we have the informal craft that
exports a lot of products through AGOA,
which is, you know, the free trade agreements
with the U.S. And what you start seeing
is those groups of women are being part of
that informal, formal economy. But what we've
seen is that women's employment is not
just creating jobs that allow them to pay for
goods and services, but it really does also
play another really interesting piece that
I finally see tying back to my mother's
ask of, you know, educating a woman to the
village. When you think about how women spend
their money, most of the times and research
continues to show over and over again
that women will tend to reinvest in education,
in medical care and other things that
really contribute towards social development.
At the same time, women will tend to
create job and employment opportunities
for other women. They're not just
thinking about that on their own.
And I saw this when I worked, you know,
when I ran my family non-profit. And what
I saw is that every time there was some
school project, whenever I was renovating
a classroom, it was the women who
were always there.They were not thinking
about what they would forego that day.
That said, what are the things that I wish
I had learned in school? And this is something,
you know, when I think about myself as
a researcher, some days I'm wondering, what
is it that people really know? And what
should I teach? And here are some of the things
that I really wish I had learned earlier.
lesson one I was sent out as a young social
researcher on a project to Mozambique to
really examine the adaption of a new bean variety
a black bean had been introduced and over
13 billion had been poured into this
particular bean and what we started seeing as we
were looking at adaption is that we started
seeing, yes, there was a lot of farming
tasks that were being shared between men and
women. But what was fascinating about this
study, once we got all the data, was that we
started seeing some interesting trends here.
Women did a lot of the really hard labor,
I would call it, the planting, the weeding,
the threshing. But when it came to things
like spraying and fertilize their application
they were not involved in that and when
we tried to find out why they would say
that it's for their health you know this is
something that was culturally not permitted
but we also said seeing something else when
it came to going to the markets it's the
men who went but what would happen you know
they would go and and the women would have
to go back to caregiving. So I started
questioning, why is it that the woman who works
so hard doesn't get to have a say on how
the income that is raised from this really
goes back and gets used at the household?
lesson number two i was working with the soy
innovation lab again back Mozambique, Ghana
and we were working on trying to figure
out what happens when you put out a new
technology into um into the community who really
adapts it you know what do men displace
women from us does it benefit? Does it grow
economies? What happens? And so there were
three hypotheses that I wanted to test with this study.
The first one was, you know, if
people have access to extension services, as
well as people who they can talk to, will
that really help them in adapting a new
agriculture technology, in this case, being a
new seed variety, a new seed that would generate
more income for their family, that would
also create new innovative opportunities
in terms of products. And the second one was
trying to really understand the role social
networks played in terms of development
of new technologies as well as uptake. And
finally, I also wanted to know if households
that were led by women were more likely to
uptake soybean because one of the bigger
goals for this particular innovation lab was
to really look for ways through which protein
could be introduced into the family household
and also lead to some sales that would
lead to income that went into other areas.
What we found, and forgive me for putting a
very busy network graph here, but I thought
I would highlight this. What we found when
we mapped out all the networks, they were very
central points. So if you look at those
stars, there's a very dark spot in the middle.
Everybody seems to be going to one of those
main nodes and getting the information
from that. But what we, the bigger piece
coming out of this was women, unlike men,
actually suffered more when they had much
tighter networks. The more family you had,
the closer you were, the less likely you were
going to adapt any of the new technology.
And again, this became a new question
of, is there a dark side to the network?
Because we always say the more
friends you have, the better off you are.
In the case of Mozambique,
that was not the case.
So when we talk about the role of, you
know, women in development and we look at
their access to technology and markets, what
are some of the things that we could see?
Again, going back to the cases of Mozambique
and looking at the climate resilience
innovation lab that was working with the beans,
we did a study again looking at the adaption
of the new black bean variety what was
interesting in this was when we tried to look
at you know women's access to the market how
some of the things we started seeing was
based on a score of one to you know on a five
point score that was zero to fall, what
we started seeing is that men tended to have
higher responsibilities compared to women.
When we asked the men and the women if
they had someone, you know, if they had
access to someone that they could ask or
learn about market pricing, most men said
that they knew somebody. Most women knew
only one person or no one. The other thing
we realized is that men tended to have
more farmers that they could talk to and
also the means to transport their beans
compared to others. So that was something
that we thought was pretty interesting.
More recently while working with my
students as you know Marie Elisa mentioned
I do run an engaged learning program and
that program really does provide students
the unique opportunity to get out to
the real world work with a community
partner and help them solve a problem
So E&E Green Farms is a woman-led business.
Founded out of COVID in the name and the
hope of creating some employment as well as
addressing food security, the co-founder
wanted to see how they could use social
media to really encourage more youth to engage
in farming. So what we found was that,
you know, a lot of the youth were more
inclined to use and adapt social media apps.
On the contrary, the older farmers were
more inclined to follow you know, offline
strategies and listen to the radio. But while
that could, you know, inform the marketing
strategy, what really struck me on this
study is similar to the previous studies
that had been over 10 years earlier in
still the same southern region of Africa is
that we kept on seeing that men still occupied
higher paying jobs compared to women.
In a more recent study as well, and this
is tied to the former ILSI, that is the
Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement. So in
Senegal, I had my graduate students work on
their master's projects on this and what
we were looking at within the value chain
for cowpea and palm millet was you know if
you introduce village -based agents and
women in particular played that role would it
really allow for improved access to seed
as well as nutrition. And coming out of the
field, some of the things we found was
that as much as there's been a big push,
some of the state-led campaigns and funded
programs that are running through like the
World Bank, we start seeing that as much
as you can push that out, we have people
unable to sell the seed because there's the
free stuff being given by the government.
So this is like a double -edged sword. So what
do you do? Do you give free seed? How do
you support that? The other thing we started
seeing is that the cultural norms and the
institutional norms, as much as Africa has
really advanced, they still hold pretty deep
within the rural areas. So you start seeing a
lot of women, as much as they may own access
to land, that usually does not afford them
the wonderful opportunity to be able to make
the decisions in terms of what they can
plant, how much, and when they have a lot of
the resources, they're presumed to not be
worthy or equal. So that became another issue.
Another Senegal case, and, you know, this
is the last of the empirical studies that
I would really want to highlight, comes
from a much more recent study that was
completed by another of my graduate students.
And she did this project under the support
of the Berwick Group over here at Cornell.
And basically what the project had gone
out to investigate was there is a lot of
water-borne disease that is caused by a
little snail that lives within some of the
vegetation within rivers. Because a lot of
the women fetching water for cooking,
cleaning and doing a lot of also getting the
wreaths that they used to make the mats.
They tend to have one of the highest levels
of infections of what I call bilharzia.
So the goal for this
particular project was,
following some modeling that had been previously
done, could we create a green type of
job? Could we create an employment opportunity
that would allow women to take leadership
of some industry that could turn this
cerrado, this terrible invasive weed that grows
within the rivers, can they turn that into
compost that could be used within the garden?
so natural fertilizer or could they turn
it into a cow feed so it's high in nitrogen
so that's why it becomes a natural piece for
fertilizer but again it's also pretty
nutritious which makes it a good animal feed and
and so we started looking at that and of
course there was a lot of literature that had
looked at you know mechanization adaption in sub-saharan Africa.
What are some of the things that have made it to succeed and fail.
And going into the field,
we found several things.
Women in Senegal, as much as Senegal tends
to be much better advanced compared to other
West African countries, are still reporting
some of the lowest levels of education.
The other thing we saw is that, you know,
households that had access to some form
of higher level of mechanized tools like
sprayers and seeders were more likely to
earn a little bit more money than others.
What was most surprising for this was
a lot of the equipment that had been
introduced before, for example, for
cutting down the reeds that used to make
the mats that the women groups sell.
They were not appropriate for the environment.
The women complained that this great
equipment came in, but when it cut the
TIFA, as they call it would be all on
the water, which would make it soggy and
useless for their weaving. So that raises
the question of the kind of technology
that gets out there. The other thing that
we saw after doing some modeling is, you
know, it takes a lot of money to scale, you
know, a new business. And when you think
about the larger agrochemical companies
that are producing the chemical fertilizers,
and many of them are multinationals,
then these small community enterprises
really get challenged in order,
they cannot sustain themselves.
And finally, and this is what I call the
beautiful highlight of all this, is
that we started seeing women who had access
to mobile money were able to actually
do so much more. They could access
training. They could actually access
markets. And they were able to have stronger
networks. So what does all this mean?
When I look at this as someone who really
explores and enjoys looking at how
policies could be changed to promote
inclusive growth for all, I see several
things. Changing policy trends due to
institutional, you know, we've seen a lot
of institutional support that has led
to higher and more inclusive education,
inclusive property rights. More women
are able to earn incomes as well as also
own property now. Tax incentives that
really encourage companies to hire women.
These are all part of why we're seeing
these positive trends. The other
thing that we're also seeing is that
globalization, as much as, you know,
there are people who think globalization is
the worst thing. This is where I, again,
another contradiction. I am in a school of
business. Should we shun globalization and
capitalism or should we embrace it as a pathway
to development and think of ways that we
could help shape some of the development
policies that exist there? But I feel that
globalization has not only opened new pathways
through which entrepreneurial opportunities
can be developed, but also created new
ways through which information can be accessed,
which makes people much more productive.
As we think about the role generative AI
will play in the years coming, and especially
right now, I'm personally very curious
and will be looking forward to see how
the young people, how women in sub-Saharan
Africa will adapt gen AI to contribute
towards their entrepreneurial development.
So, and that goes into, you know, the
changing infrastructure we're seeing within
the technology space, the digital platforms
and all. So, in a nutshell, I would
say I see a lot of hope and positive
opportunities for the generations coming up
and I just cannot imagine you know a world
whereby women will not have the same
opportunities as you know everyone else.
So with that, I will stop here
so that we have a wonderful
opportunity to have some discussion.
Thank you so much.
So I don't see any questions in the text
and I don't see a hand up. So I'm going
to ask the first question to get people started and hopefully.
Let's see so you've mentioned that women even in their
smaller informal businesses also create jobs
and can be very innovative so can you say
a little bit more about that.
Absolutely! okay you all have to forgive me i was
brought up and i spent a lot of time
with my grandmother. So I tend to adapt
a very African stance by using
storytelling rather than giving a lecture.
So when I talk about women being innovative
and creating job opportunities for others,
what I've seen when I worked within the
nonprofit sector in Kenya in particular, um i
worked with a group of women who were working
to do some reforestation and so they
were planting some seedlings and and what
they would do would be they would go out and
get their friend and tell them this is a
new group that we've got that will also help
us to create money so can you pick whatever
siblings you have on your farm and join
us better yet when my grandmother lived in
a very rural area and one of the things she
would always tell my mother about was how
she worried for the kids in her village
that they would never have a good education
they worried that the kids had to go fetch
water from the rivers you know and they spent
so much time doing that so what she and a
group of other women decided to do was to
build a boarding school now my grandmother
was not educated but she knew the value of
education having had my mother as a nurse and
the others so what what ended up coming out
of this is that they built a school but this
school created a means through which her
women groups were able to generate income
they turned around and hired some of those
other women to go in and work as the matrons
as the caregivers as the cooks and then they
also created jobs for the young guys to come
and build the school and and so on and so
forth so when I look at how women have really
how they create job opportunities for
each other i think that gives a good example
of how I've seen this you know over my years.
Thank you so much. Okay we have two questions.
Larry Vaughan raises hands. So please
go ahead and unmute yourself Larry and then
we have a question from Leanna.
O kay thank you Fridah. I was really interested in the
example you gave in Mozambique where the tight
networks were more resistant to adoption than
the looser networks it seems like there
would be great value if you could predict
before you get very far into a technology
transfer program which kind of networks you have
and how they might behave? So that's first
part of the question then the second part is
when you're further along down the adoption
timeline might those tighter resistant
networks actually catch up or even surpass the
looser networks. Once you've overcome that
threshold of adoption, if adoption might
spread fast within those networks? Thank you.
Okay, great. So I will go ahead and answer
your questions in the same order you asked
them. So what we saw is the friendship
networks tended to be, among the men, were
actually quite interesting. The friendship
networks allowed for men to be able to go
out into the marketplaces and gain more
information. For the women, it was a little
different in that what we suspect was
happening, and this is something that we keep
on saying we do need to do a little bit
more investigation on, is we saw women who
were very close, their family, their kin,
their friends network versus the business
networks they did not want to break with the
norm they did not want to go outside what
was acceptable it had to be something that was
permitted by someone higher up someone of
authority so there was that whole piece of
I do not want to stray the places where we
saw that being a little different is when we
had women who had slightly higher levels of
education then they were willing to take
a risk which goes into your second question
you know when when you break away from
the tight network and you're on a much
looser connection are you able to take on new
technology and the answer is yes and and
I think a lot of that comes out of that
risk taking that you really don't owe anyone
an apology that you're willing to
take a risk to really grow, because you're
not being constrained by that. So I hope
that really does help answer the question.
Yes, thank you.
Thank you, Larry.
Okay, go. Let's see. Yes, Leanna, please unmute yourself.
First, thank you so much for sharing your
work with us today. Thank you for being here.
Very interesting and good work. I'm
wondering if you have tried to replicate
some of the things you've done in rural
parts of the United States? And if so,
I'm interested in where, because rural
is very different in the U.S., in parts
of the U.S. as it is compared to other parts
of the world. So I'm just, I'm interested
in hearing if you have done that or if
you know of others who have tried to do
something similar in rural United States.
Thank you, Leanna, for that question.
So after I left University of Missouri,
I worked for the soybean board.
And one of the things I did
working with soybean farmers was to,
you know, I was building an evaluation
system that would allow the board,
you know, being the checkoff to understand
how new technology in terms of new
seed varieties that they were paying
universities to research and develop.
CRISPR, for example, how it was being adapted
and the other piece we were looking at
and this came up after actually during COVID
and after COVID was access to internet
and so I went back and tried to replicate
some of the social network studies we had
done with folks from University of Tennessee.
Unfortunately, I left before we had
completed those studies and also we had to stop
some of those for other reasons. But
what we saw is some of the behaviors we saw
on the networks in terms of how close
knit people remained and would also restrict
what they were willing to adapt and not
adapt is the same pattern that we saw.
Farmers in a particular area, if
they farmed conventional soybeans, then
they would tend to keep to that.
And part of their reasoning was, if someone
was trying to introduce a non-GMO variety
that did not require some of the sprayers,
then they were worried that if someone
sprays their field, it will contaminate their
variety and hence they lose the market. So
you start seeing some of those, you know,
it's your neighbor, you want to be the same
because you can hedge when you're bigger.
That collectiveness is
something that we see across.
Where you saw bigger splits is when someone's
got a little bit more land, more money.
So they're willing to try new practices
like conservation agriculture.
They're willing to try other
things that really went beyond
what a smaller farmer would go.
So I would love and welcome the opportunity
to try to replicate some of those. But yes,
Thank you for that, Leanna.
Gabriel.
And then after that is Deborah Rubin. And
then we've got several more coming up.
Hello. So, are there any plans or, like,
avenues that already exist to teach more
about building networks and educating that,
like,
because it seemed when you, sorry,
when you discussed, like, how
tighter family networks,
it feels like knowing more about how
the different types of networks affect
innovation can be pretty valuable
information and are there any like plans
to kind of spread that information
so that's a great question Daniel the
question of how you know different types of
networks will effect spread of information is
something I would say social scientists
are really always thrilled to engage in and
you know as someone who came from a pure
business to sociology background I would say
I would look at it with a caution in the
sense that what one of the biggest criticisms
I have on international development has
been, we tend to study one thing and think
that's the norm across all the networks.
So for example, let me clarify this.
When we looked at the behaviors of women,
you know, who had higher levels of
education, who were loosely connected, and so
they had weak ties with everyone else.
So they were more willing to go to market.
They were more willing to try new seed.
We could not really pinpoint whether
it was just the education that
led to that kind of a behavior.
We could not pinpoint if it's because they
were the sole breadwinner for the family that
that's why they had to really take those
higher risks. So one thing we know is that
human beings are very, very complex. So while
you can really look at how different traits
and different, you know, environments could
shape the way networks work, I think what's
most important is for you to ask, what is
the role of that particular network? Do you
want it to reinforce something or do you want
it to change that? Because what we know
and what we see is that networks are also built
within some existing social institution.
Those social institutions being the
way our families are built, the
religious groups that we're in, as well
as the types of schools we go to.
So I'm sorry I'm not doing a good job in
answering that completely, Daniel, but I hope
that just allows you to see how tough it
is to just say, this is what we need to fix
to just be able to address this adoption.
I think you won't be able to fully answer any of these questions.
Greatquestions, great presentations.
We have three more questions right now.
So, Deborah Rubin, would you
please unmute yourself and go ahead?
Sure. Thank you, Fridah, for such an interesting
presentation and managing to do so much
in such a short time. I wanted to follow a
little bit on Larry Vaughan's question and
to ask you to expand about how women might
be able to better formalize their small
businesses, given that they face so many constraints,
and whether there are ways in which AI
might actually help them in that process.
That's a loaded one.
And I would say I think
that needs to be like my next big smart
project because I'm actually I've got a couple
of projects this year in sub-Saharan
Africa in Kenya that are actually looking at
how AI can be built into that women entrepreneurs,
particularly within the digital
platforms. Because what I've seen is we have a
lot of young women who have signed up to be
digital content creators. So they're doing
this and pushing out a lot of promotions.
And as I've been watching this
trend go on, there are a couple of
things that have really struck me.
One is there is a very high educated
population of young Africans.
And because of that and the lack of jobs,
technologies such as Gen AI offer
a new pathway through which they
can create tools and services as well
as products that they can sell.
So that becomes one way.
How they are able to support that and how
they could formalize that, because right
now they're basically working for someone
else, perhaps, and I say perhaps with
a caution. grain of salt. One pathway could
be using the collective organizing
strategy that we've seen with cooperatives.
What I've realized based on my work is
when you have a collective of people,
that creates a lot of noise that tends to
get visibility from the local governments.
In the case of Rwanda, when we worked
with E&E firms and we were looking at how
they were able to multiply the seed that
they were exporting to other countries,
what we learned is that they were
encouraging women to work in groups. And those
groups would end up being registered.
You know, the local government would
encourage them to register because when they
were registered as a collective, then
they would have access to micro grants,
loans, training, which in turn gave them
more formality than anything else and gave
them more opportunity. So in a nutshell,
in summary, I think looking at successful
models such as the cooperatives that have
worked, that could be one approach that
they could use to formalize themselves
because that's recognized by the government.
But at the same time, it will give them
a way to mitigate and de-risk what we see
being one of the reasons why most of them
remain informal. No one wants to give,
you know, an informal organization a loan
or credit because there is no mechanism
through which they can get that collateral.
So I hope that helps offer some insights
on that. Well, thank you. I think that that's
great because it also speaks to what has
been found in many of the Women's Empowerment
in Agriculture Index studies that not
belonging to a group is one of the largest
factors in disempowerment. So appreciate
you confirming that with your own research.
Yes.
Maria Elisa, you're on.
Ibiye Tam-George, they've unmuted themselves. Go
ahead with your question, and then
I'll read another question after that.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Fridah,
for your insightful presentation.
So I was particularly interested in your
point about how free government programs like
seed distribution can sometimes have unintended
consequences for small local enterprises.
So how do you think policymakers can strike
a balance between offering essential
support to vulnerable farmers and ensuring that
these interventions don't weaken women-led
businesses in the agricultural value chain?
That is a really good question. And
it's good because it's one of my
Achilles heels coming out of Rwanda,
if I may be honest with all of you.
And it's also my Achilles heel because I'm
working with a postdoc in Malawi who's looking
at the seed value chains. And one of the
biggest questions has been how can governments
better balance these policies that are
sometimes actually encouraged by outside
organizations, multilateral organizations, that
are trying to build some, you know, some
development efforts. And I would say one of
those has, I believe, having participatory
engagement with all the community stakeholders
within that, you know, would be one way
that they could balance that because there
will never be a one size fits all. And I
think what we've seen, not just within sub
-Saharan Africa, but even here at the U.S., when
I worked at the Soybean Board, which is
part of USDA, is that often policymakers come
up with these brilliant ideas and they
don't really recognize the implications on the
ground. So being able to bring the different
stakeholders to the table and have a clearly
thought through strategy on how do they
roll out or how could they limit or how do
they face, you know, how do they face some
projects? That could be one pathway that
would really help balancing, but not to say
we're going to turn on the tap today for
subsidies and tomorrow we're going to turn it
off. So I think having some measured and
tempered approach that really engages everybody
would be one pathway to that you could really
mitigate some of these concerns we see.
I'm going to read one of the questions from
Aidan Cabrera, but I want to remind you
of the question that they're referring to.
So their question is, building off Leanna Blevins, what aspects of these interactions
do you think apply in a more worldwide
view in both other separated worlds and in
denser communities? So Leanna had asked if
you've replicated your international work in
any rural U.S. communities, or are you
aware of others who have done similar work?
It's like a dense question, so, and
I think we'll have time for one more
question if somebody wants to just
raise their hand in the box or write
something in the chat. Okay, thank you.
I'm a little torn on how to
answer your question because the question
of replicating a study, we could look
at it in terms of, you know, the methods,
the methodology that gets adapted. that
that could be one way to answer it but
again when you think about interactions there
is a question of culture the cultural
differences so maybe do we think about
that in terms of you know what are some
cultural values or norms that drive certain
behaviors attitudes perceptions it's it's
a pretty tough one without having a
little bit more specific things.
So i know that was a dense
and like overlapping question so Aiden
asked building on that are there do you
think some of these interactions apply
Let's see.
Aiden was asking, yeah, do some of
these apply in a more worldwide view
in both separated worlds and in
denser communities? I don't know
if you understand that question.
Otherwise, we have five minutes to go.
So I would ask if anybody else would like to raise
their hand or put a question in the chat.
Oh we got a new one okay.
Otherwise I'll ask a question but oh
you're sorry now let me ask a question
about uh wondering if the if the tariffs
that the U.S. is putting in place is
affecting men and women differently?
Oh boy, that's that's a fun one because
I don't think there's anyone who's not
suffered from the tariffs, to be honest.
Driving into school this morning, there
was a whole discussion with the American
Soybean Association President, and they were
asking him about whether the soybean farmers
feel the proposed $100 billion bailout
is going to be the solution. But what I
would say in terms of this question is, I
feel everybody will be affected, and
particularly women more disproportionately in
Africa, because a lot of what the sectors
that Africa has been supporting, or rather
a lot of the sectors that employ women in
Africa are the same ones that are shipping
agriculture products, crops, to the U.S.
At the same time, places like Lesotho, Kenya,
they have built all these export
processing zones that have been behind
development of the apparel sector.
A lot of the jeans and clothes we buy from
our department stores are made in Africa,
And I don't know if people even realize
that. And knowing that about six out of
10 of the people in those factories are
women, I absolutely see women being
disproportionately impacted by this. And, you
know, it's not just them. It's going to
have a cascading effect because when these
women are affected, then their children
don't get to go to school. Then we've got
another generation of poverty being created.
So it's a bigger problem than we see.
okay well I'm so sorry to end this discussion on such a sad note.
But I am gonna have to wrap it up it's 2:22. So I want
to thank you so much to everybody for attending
and of course Fridah for this wonderful
presentation. We're sharing a link for
in the chat for a survey that we'd really
appreciate if you send some feedback
in there it helps us bring future wonderful
speakers like Fridah. And I do want to
announce our next event is November 13th.
Also on Zoom, Dr. Deepti Chatti,
an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego in the
Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Critical Gender Studies program.
She will be talking about gender empowerment
and how it is experienced subjectively
and the nature of its relationship to,
quote, development. So don't miss this one.
Hope to see you on November 13th
Thank you!
Thank you everybody!