Gender, Physical Mobility, ITC and Livestock Market Outreach Among Smallholder Livestock Keepers in Mixed Crop Livestock System in Ethiopia

Abstract

Evidences on existing gender dynamics with regard to access to and control over rural based transportation and ICT for the rural agricultural sectors give insight into the potential constraints affecting men’s and women’s physical and virtual mobility to access market outreach for different livestock types. Recent finding has showed the existence of intra and inter household gender differentials mainly in terms of access to and control over household based Intermediate Means of Transportation and Information, Communication Technologies (ICTs). The gender gap in these two  elements ( Rural Transport and ICT) deny smallholder livestock keepers to access vital market information as well as negatively affecting the physical and virtual mobility of women smallholders in both male and female headed households. LIVES Project survey result clearly indicated that MHHs had higher number of pack animals, transportation equipment such as animal cart, motorcycle and bicycles which improve the household’s access to livestock input and output markets.  Similarly, the finding indicated that MHH owned significantly higher number of radio and mobile phones than FHHs which has implications on access to livestock extension and market information services. This paper discusses existing gender differentials related to household owned means of transportation and ICTs and try to show the type of market outreach preferred by men and women smallholders for different types of livestock and livestock products. It also attempted to present a descriptive presentation on the problem and supported the findings with a few illustrations. The findings described in this paper are partly based on a household baseline survey carried out in four regions of Ethiopia in the year 2014.Qualitative findings resulted from gender rapid assessment, periodic reports and systematic observations on livestock market locations made to supplements the baseline finding by and large.

Keywords: ICT, Gender, Livestock, Market Outreach, LIVES project, Physical mobility