Analysis of group discussions undertaken in Gambia and Kenya completed. The South African counterpart, Directorate of Agricultural Economics, was unable to complete the group session work due to loss of staff. The results of the analysis were combined with the existing case study findings and examples from reviewed literature to produce the discussion document OD 135. This report comprises a review of the current situation of women in smallholder schemes in relation to training and makes recommendations for training policies and future training initiatives. The discussion is supported by summaries of the country studies.

In the course of the project, in addition to developing diagnostic tools, two Technical Notes were produced. OD/TN 80 comprised a literature review and over 150 references and abstracts, and OD/TN 82 details the findings of case study surveys in Gambia, Kenya and South Africa. A poster publicising the summary findings from the case study was also produced. Several seminars based on the work have assisted in dissemination of the findings. The technical notes, poster and the report have been widely disseminated not only to collaborating institutions participating in the study, but also to irrigation departments and development workers in Africa and to other gender specialists in the UK and Europe. The poster has been particularly popular and was relatively cheap to produce.

Very little training and technology transfer has been directed explicitly to women. Examples were found in Gambia, where it was clear that in the woman's horticultural scheme where training was emphasised, results were notably improved in terms of production and financial viability. Another Gambian example included a strategy to give female trainees community support by giving the community responsibility for selecting and supporting the candidate best suited to receive training. Kenyan initiatives in directing credit to women and in linking irrigation activities to projects designed to promote income generating activities over which women could keep control, demonstrated the potential positive impact of addressing women's needs. The remaining sites displayed a lack of gender based programmes to investigate. Part of the reason why women do not benefit from training is the failure of those offering training to assess the needs of women explicitly. Training is heavily influenced by production goals and relates only loosely to male or female human needs. It is clear that there is potential for increasing the relevance of training courses for both men and women in the smallholder irrigation sector in Africa. Women have to date received less training than men which severely constrains production because of the major role women play in the productive labour force on smallholder systems.

Overall the evidence suggested that so little female technology transfer has been undertaken that it is more realistic to look first at the pre-conditions required to enable improvement in the delivery of technology to women rather than to attempt to assess the impacts of technology transfer completed. In this case the output could not reasonably be a guideline and an alternative discussion document was preferred.

OD 135 HR Report Developing the skills and participation of women irrigators

OD/TN 80 HR Report Women in Irrigation Annotated Bibliography

OD/TN 82 HR Report Women in Irrigation case studies from Gambia, Kenya and South Africa

Further proposals for implementing and monitoring training, which explicitly addresses the needs of women irrigators, should be approved and funded. Further analysis of the data generated in these case studies should be undertaken to identify potentially useful background information. It may be practical to pilot such training on one project initially. A proposal based on findings from the study relating to gender-based impacts of structure and equipment design has been proposed and has been approved for funding by DFID (R.6876). Other issues such as allocation of plots and irrigation-related employment deserve attention.

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