| Summary: | The Building Equitable Climate-Resilient African Bean and Insect Sectors (BRAINS) project is facilitating sustainable agricultural change throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. The project seeks to enhance low-carbon, climate-resilient production systems and broaden inclusive livelihood options for rural communities. The initiative in Ethiopia targets the common bean, fruit trees, and insects for food and feed value chains, which possess significant potential to improve food and nutrition security, diversify revenue sources, and strengthen resilience among smallholder farmers amid escalating climate variability. The BRAINS project is fundamentally dedicated to gender equality and social inclusion, ensuring that women, men, and youth are actively involved, receive equitable benefits from interventions, and are enabled to engage in decision-making and value-chain governance.
Ethiopia, like numerous countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), is facing compounded challenges of climate change, environmental degradation, and socio-economic disparities that disproportionately impact rural communities reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Erratic rainfall, recurrent droughts, and land degradation continue to undermine agricultural productivity and household wellbeing (Belay et al., 2017; Njeru et al., 2016). Women constitute a substantial portion of the agricultural workforce and are integral to food production, household supply, and natural resource management. However, their productivity, adaptive capacity, and decision-making power are restricted by enduring gender disparities associated with unequal access to land, agricultural inputs, finance, extension services, technology, markets, and leadership opportunities (World Bank, 2019; Abdisa et al., 2024; Tesafa et al., 2025). These inequities are compounded by socio-cultural norms, time burdens, and institutional impediments that restrict women’s agency within households, cooperatives, and community structures (Bayeh, 2016; Mulema & Damtew, 2016).
Evidence from national and regional research suggests that reducing gender disparities in agriculture not only increases production and household food security but also strengthens climate resilience and intergenerational welfare. Yet women and youth, particularly those in marginalised and resource-poor rural areas, remain underrepresented in high-value value-chain activities, entrepreneurial opportunities, and climate-smart agricultural innovations. Addressing these inequalities requires gender-responsive programming, institutional reform, and transformative approaches that challenge restrictive norms while promoting inclusive participation and benefit-sharing throughout agricultural systems.
The BRAINS gender strategy for Ethiopia responds to these challenges by embracing gender equality as a core pillar of agricultural development. The strategy is grounded in the Reach, Benefit, Empower, and Transform (RBET) framework, the gender-transformative socio-technical innovation bundles (GTSTIBs) approach, and the Youth and Women Quality Centre (YWQC) model, which advocate systematic pathways from inclusive participation to equitable benefits, enhanced agency, and structural change in social norms and institutional practices. Within the Ethiopian context, the strategy applies these approaches to increase the involvement of men, women, youth, and other marginalised groups across the bean, fruit tree, and insect for food and feed value chains, while fostering climate-resilient, equitable, and sustainable livelihoods.
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