| Sumario: | The Building Equitable Climate-Resilient African Bean and Insect Sectors (BRAINS) project is a multi-country initiative operating across 15 Sub-Saharan African countries, including Kenya. BRAINS aims to foster low-carbon, climate-resilient agrifood systems in the bean, fruit tree, and insect sectors by equitably enhancing climate resilience among women and youth, scaling the adoption of climate-smart agriculture technologies, and building a pipeline of gender-responsive, climate-resilient enterprises aligned with emerging climate finance goals.
Across participating countries, gender disparities remain pronounced, with women and youth disproportionately affected by climate change and constrained by limited access to land, technologies, training, and decision-making spaces. In Kenya, qualitative findings reveal a strongly gendered division of labour across value chains. Women dominate bean production and post-harvest activities, men control marketing and income, fruit tree roles are more balanced, and insect farming shows emerging opportunities for youth engagement.
The BRAINS gender strategy responds to these challenges by mainstreaming gender equality across project design, implementation, and sustainability. Grounded in the Reach–Benefit–Empower–Transform framework, socio-technical innovation bundles, and the Youth and Women Quality Centre model, the strategy promotes inclusive participation, equitable benefits, and youth transitions into resilient agrifood system
|
|---|