Gendered opportunities, challenges and prospects of the dairy value chain in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper discusses the gender gaps in the dairy value chain in Tanzania and the challenges and opportunities for addressing them. A desk review was conducted to study various interventions carried out in Tanzania from colonial period to-date. Results show that there was no gender consideration during colonial period and soon after independence. Interventions by Heifer Project International from 1980s were the first to consider gender issues in the Tanzanian dairy value chain. Gender gaps such as high workload for women, lack of market information on milk and other dairy products and lack of capacity to control resources emanating from the dairy value chain were identified. Other challenges identified include lack of skills for improving dairy management owing to their limited access to training and other technologies. Further, data used for planning, monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment of the interventions was not sex disaggregated; and there was a lack of political will to integrate gender issues by the project leaders.Opportunities available for bridging the gender gaps include availability of friendly technologies to women such as preservation of feeds for use in the dry season when the price of milk is high and use of mobile phones to access market information. The study concludes that proper integration of gender in the project cycle will help to narrow the gender gaps. The study recommends project leaders to integrate / mainstream gender in projects by engaging gender specialists to guide project staff on how to systematically integrate gender as well as develop or enhance the capacity of employees on gender; and to demonstrate, with examples, the economic benefits of integrating gender in projects.