Introduction

Addressing gender issues lies at the heart of tackling rural poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. The effectiveness of development initiatives continue to be constrained by significant distortions in workloads, access to resources, sharing in the benefits, and opportunities to participate in decision-making between members of rural communities, whether on the grounds of gender or socio-economic status. There is a new sense of urgency as the full impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic destroys rural livelihoods and gives rise to a growing proportion of female-headed households, who now typically account for up to 30% of rural households. Progress has been made towards mainstreaming gender within the policy framework, and many countries now have national gender policies in place. However, much more substantive action is required on the ground if the position of poor rural women is to improve significantly.

The strategy for the Gender Programme in Eastern and Southern Africa has been to integrate the treatment of gender issues within project activities as a means of improving the outcome of IFAD-supported projects and thereby tackle rural poverty more effectively. The Programme to strengthen the gender focus in IFAD projects in the region arose following an assessment of gender aspects in ongoing projects in Eastern and Southern Africa conducted in 1999. Funding was secured from the Government of Norway (USD 1.8 million) for a period of three years, running from 1999 to 2002.

The Programme has had five principal objectives:

• to help ongoing IFAD projects develop strategies for mainstreaming gender, and strengthen the implementation of projects that already have gender strategies
• to provide project staff with skills in conducting gender analysis in order to obtain concrete knowledge regarding gender differences in project areas
• to ensure that gender issues are included in monitoring and evaluation activities
• to help selected projects develop pilot gender action research, and
• to draw lessons for the design and implementation of future projects.