Browse by Theme: Value Chains

By 2030, the number of people living in poverty in fragile settings could rise to 620 million, or more than 80% of the world’s poorest people. CARE’s Resilient Market System work aims to make crisis-affected market systems more resilient, inclusive, and profitable, in particular to enable women to better absorb the shocks brought on by conflict or by natural disasters. This report aims to provide thought leaders and practitioners – from humanitarian and development programming – with insights and guidance for a strong market system approach, customised for fragile and conflict affected settings and targeting women and girls.

COVID-19 has become an unprecedented and unpredictable global crisis. It is “a defining moment in human history”.  COVID-19 has affected everyone, but not equally so. The pandemic is exploiting and exposing deep structural inequalities in economies, health care systems, and societies around the world, with devastating and disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable people, particularly those who live in development and humanitarian settings. Single mothers working in garment factories have lost their jobs and households’ only income, while the pandemic is exacerbating other families’ food insecurity. For those living in areas where conflict has destroyed healthcare facilities, COVID-19 poses a uniquely terrible and acute danger.

Women still have fewer economic rights, less access to economic opportunities and less control over economic resources than men due to a range of social, legal and political inequalities. Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) is one of four priority areas for CARE’s work, as set out in the CARE 2020 Programme Strategy. This report articulates why and how we work to drive women’s economic empowerment, our reach and impact to date and some lessons we have learned along the way.

CARE International and Diageo have been working together in a global partnership since 2016, empowering women and engaging men to address the root causes of gender inequality throughout the Diageo value chain and beyond. CARE has conducted an in-depth gender analysis of Diageo’s barley value chain in the Oromia region in Ethiopia to analyse the barriers and opportunities for women’s empowerment.

A summary of the in-depth gender analysis conducted by CARE of Diageo’s barley value chain in the Oromia region in Ethiopia.

Functioning market systems and a responsible and responsive private sector are critical to livelihoods, autonomy and well-being. However, they are both heavily impacted by crisis, and women, who face greater barriers to economic activity than men, are particularly at risk. This briefing paper outlines CARE’s initial thinking on fostering economic empowerment for women and the resilience of market systems in fragile contexts.

Emerging best practices of women’s leadership within cocoa farming in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire

This report of an extensive review of the Cocoa Life program’s approach to promoting women’s leadership within cocoa farming in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire found that the program’s interventions are having a positive effect on women’s agency, including: enabling women to have greater access to and control over productive and financial resources; strengthening women’s ability to become community leaders and role models in the community; providing structures and processes that enhance the voice and participation of women.