This summary originated from interviews carried out by the Africa RISING SAIRLA project in Ghana and Malawi to understand decision-makers’ needs in terms of gender and youth equity analysis in agricultural programs. Operating across the decision-making spectrum, from senior government officials writing policies to project officers implementing projects in communities, including directors of non-profits setting strategic priorities and specialists analyzing technologies and interventions, the interviewed decision-makers from Ghana and Malawi hold different levels of experience with regard to projects’ evaluation of specific gender and youth equity assessment

1. Summary on decision-makers’
needs assessment
Africa RISING-SAIRLA project-Ghana and
Malawi
Ida Djenontin, Philip Grabowski, Judith Kamoto, Jessica Kamphanje-Phiri, Irene Egyir,
Akosua Darkwah, Gundula Fischer and Leo Zulu on behalf of SAIRLA
12/7/2017
“Once a policy is adopted, I think the work ends there. Therefore, there is very little that goes to people
working in that area at lower level. That is why most of the times, you will find that you have the policy
but it’s there sitting and nobody is using it.” This is a deep hint shared by a UN agency senior analyst in
Malawi to point out the lack of policy implementation that commonly inhibits positive change in
development work.
The story of mismatch between policy formulation and implementation continues with other examples
where policies made agricultural programing difficult. One is the inappropriate recommendations to burn
crop residues; a practice that results in soil degradation. Another is unnecessary export bans that cause
cooperatives to default on their loan repayments and losing trust from the international trade partners.
Similar situations induce frustrations among development workers especially when endeavors deployed at
the community and district levels to identify priority needs are not supported and backed up by the
district government due to lack of commitment and policy incoherence.
These revelations originated from interviews carried out by the Africa RISING SAIRLA project in Ghana
and Malawi to understand decision-makers’ needs in terms of gender and youth equity analysis in
agricultural programs. Operating across the decision-making spectrum, from senior government officials
writing policies to project officers implementing projects in communities, including directors of non-profits
setting strategic priorities and specialists analyzing technologies and interventions, the interviewed
decision-makers from Ghana and Malawi hold different levels of experience with regard to projects’
evaluation of specific gender and youth equity assessment.
Decision-makers’ perspectives on broader
development projects’ evaluation
Concerning projects’ evaluation, the interviewed decision-makers are more familiar with ex-post
evaluation with less emphasis on ex-ante assessment. Usually “required” or “donors-driven”, project
evaluations are commonly realized using monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approach, including the use of
logical framework, in which SMART indicators are assessed based on the reliance on a clear Theory of

2. Change. M&E tools include baseline, mid-term, and final surveys of project participants, randomized
control trials, experimental or quasi-experimental designs, outcome mapping, and impact analysis. Other
significant evaluation methods used include qualitative studies to identify the “most significant change”
and cost-benefit analysis.
Critics of M&E included a leader of a farmer-based microfinance program in Ghana who pointed out the
use of a “huge amount of money for monitoring and evaluation” while only simple, common sense
indicators, such as for instance the repayment rate and farmer yields in the case of microfinance for
agriculture, are needed.
Challenges on project evaluation are intrinsically related to the methods use. Qualitative assessments,
though qualified as better informative, are seen as especially challenging by decision-makers given the
difficulty of analyzing qualitative data. As such, the most frequently stated challenge is the lack of staff
capacity and knowledge to use the assessment tools. The resources-consuming aspects, including
financial resources and time, were also flagged as concerns. Lack of baseline information and the
vagueness of targets or initial objectives make it complex to have an effective M&E system.
Circumventing cultural issues when asking questions is another important issue. Finally, the issues of
attribution as well as the non-objectivity of researchers in their assessment of agricultural technologies
induce biases in project evaluation.
Experiences with gender and youth
analysis
Awareness of decision-makers on tools used to assess the effects of agricultural change on women and
youth as well as the importance of carrying out such assessments is somewhat high in Ghana and
Malawi. However, their perception on the contextual applicability of the gender and youth equity’s
assessment tools is low.
Decision-makers who have carried out gender analysis shared the most common tools and approaches
used1
. The gender-sensitive participatory tools are the most used and they are similar to group visual
activities, like those originally developed for participatory rural appraisals (PRA). Focus group discussions
and other qualitative methods and surveys are also frequently employed.
Very few decision-makers have personal experience with the women’s empowerment in agriculture index
(WEAI). Among newly developed participatory tools, to capture gendered perspectives on interventions is
the “gender balance tree” tool. “This tool will tell you who is participating between men, women and
youth in a household or community, at the same time, who is not benefiting and how are the benefits
used”, testifies a senior decision-maker in agricultural extension in Malawi. Another gender specialist in
Malawi likes how the gender balance tree could be easily understood even by illiterate people because
they can draw pictures instead of writing words and therefore understand the meaning of the diagram. A
further perspective comes from another agricultural extension officer in Malawi, who says that, “the tools
works but with a lot of effort. Facilitating participatory tools is not easy, especially for communities to
grasp your ideas”. Furthermore, an agricultural researcher in Malawi points out that participatory tools,
1 Detailed lists of the tools are provided in the complete report.

3. while effective, could be very costly because they take so much time with the community. Broader
gender frameworks that underscore the use of these tools include the Harvard Analytical Framework,
Moser’s framework, Longwe framework, the social relations framework, and the sustainable livelihoods
framework.
▪ Perspectives on gender analysis and gender reports
The importance of gender analysis is obvious according to the decision-makers. Gender analysis provides
an understanding of the contextual needs of each group, who is participating, and who is benefiting or
not from the project. Gender analysis also helps to determine “if there were other issues that were just
overlooked that need to be taken on board when implementing and planning the program”. Other
evidence from gender studies justify the need of critical thinking in being inclusive in agricultural
development. One illustration is the fact that despite high levels of women’s participation in the economic
empowerment projects, men are still making major decisions about assets and control the development
committees, while women tended to be jealous of other women in leadership roles. For agriculture,
several decision-makers in Malawi mentioned that women may lead in participation of a new project but
then men take over once the benefits appear. Another example is the need to accounting for the socio-
cultural context that prevents the adoption of gender-sensitive technologies, due, for instance, to the
increasing labor burden on women. Therefore, some decision-makers advocate for more gender
transformative approaches, which seek to address the underlying root causes of inequality.
Decision-makers see gender studies and reports as very important, especially when they are explicit on
critical issues, such as who participates, who benefits, the needs of each group and the constraints to
women’s participation. However, these reports may become useless when they have technical shortfalls,
such as the when they lack a clear methodology, when they are too biased towards women issues, and
when they create disappointment from the report not meeting the expectations of the decision-maker.
Experiences and perspectives on Youth
analysis
The youth are described as the forgotten category and decision-makers feel that, often, projects and
interventions are not specific about the youth because they just assume the youth would benefit. Youth
analysis has thus been less developed and only few of the interviewed decision-makers have any
experience in assessing projects from the perspective of youth. Specific tools for youth equity analysis do
not commonly exist, though the gender analysis tools can be adapted and used.
There are unique benefits from being inclusive to the youth in agricultural programs, which reinforces the
need for youth analysis. Youth are seen as innovative, dynamic, freely sharing information, and better at
long-term planning than adults. Decision-makers recognize that youth have unique preferences as they
lean towards agribusiness, post-harvest processing, and marketing entrepreneurships. Reaching out to
the youth will help reduce the out-migration and avoid youth-borne crime, to form future leaders.
Challenges of involving the youth in development projects were also mentioned. These are inherent to
the longtime dynamic of ignoring the youth. For instance, development projects use committees
dominated by adults, who do not address youths’ priorities. Youth are also excluded from holding
positions in these committees because adults see them as harder to control and not following the culture.

4. Take away lessons and way forward
The complex gender relations among smallholder farmers make it important for projects to carry out
gender analyses of possible innovations before they are promoted to make agricultural development
more inclusive. However, given that gender-sensitive agricultural programming is falling short in
addressing the underlying root causes of inequality, it is imperative to explore the potential for
integrating gender-sensitive with gender transformative approaches to address the core issues.
The findings from the interviews highlight the complex reality of using gender and youth analysis tools
effectively for inclusive development. Most decision-makers involved in gender and youth issues do not
have sufficient information and capacity to effectively utilize analysis tools to address gender and youth
issues. Therefore, they first need adequate information about the tools that can be used for analysis; so
that they can request the appropriate tools to be used. They also need tools that match their resource
limitations and they need to be sure the tools are not too complex to be used effectively by gender
specialists or consultants.
More effective ex-ante assessment of the potential gendered impacts of projects is paramount to break
through the reliance of technical project officers on their intuition and experiences when designing
effective innovations. The different cultural, religious, resource and capacity/knowledge challenges to
implement gender- and youth-related interventions underlines decision-makers’ need for context-specific
tools.
Youth analysis is a much newer field and many of the tools for gender analysis can be adapted to
understand youth perspectives and constraints. This implies that decision-makers involved in youth
analysis tools will face similar challenges to those of gender analysis.
Addressing these compound challenges with the elaboration of a training manual on these gender and
youth analysis tools that involve participatory approaches, and with an emphasis on the costs and the
benefits of using the methods, and adapting tools to the local context becomes a priority. It provides the
impetus for the Africa RISING SAIRLA research team on gender and youth equity to develop a context
specific manual as resource for capacity building on gender and youth transformative programing in
Malawi and Ghana.