On the 19th of August 2022, I submitted my MScCCAFS thesis titled ‘Social equity blind spots for transformational adaptation in agricultural projects in Africa’. I had been working on this project since last May and have really enjoyed reading the related literature pertaining to the topic. I also enjoyed discovering how agricultural development projects functioned logistically, and what is involved in ensuring their success. It has been a challenging couple of months of completing this thesis, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process, and I am delighted to have it completed. I would like to thank my NUIG supervisors, Prof Charles Spillane, Dr. Peter McKeown, and Dr. Una Murray, and the supervisors from the CGIAR’s ClimBeR initiative, Dr. Jon Hellin, and Dr. Ana Maria Loboguerro. The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without their guidance.
In an earlier post titled ‘Research Project Methods’, I discussed the methodology of my research project used to analyse the integration of social equity and transformational adaptation in agricultural development projects. I used NVivo coding software which allowed me to quantitively analyse the number of instances (references) that certain marginalised groups featured within the proposal documents of these projects. This allowed me to research what groups featured most predominately within the projects and how their vulnerabilities were to be alleviated.
The research highlighted a significant number of references pertaining to gender within the proposal documents. These documents were sourced from 18 projects occurring in four African countries: Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, and Zambia. The high emphasis on gender within these projects is incredibly important due to the significant contributions that rural women make toward agricultural production. What these projects need to address are the vulnerabilities of other marginalised groups to prevent occurrences of maladaptation in the future. For instance, the results of this research show a significant percentage decrease in references pertaining to the disabled community, when compared to the actual populations of the disabled communities within the project regions. These discrepancies can negatively affect female populations also, for instance, if a female suffers from a disability, she may not be able to avail of project initiatives directed solely towards females. In another instance, a woman may be elderly, part of an ethnic group, and have a disability, meaning only one aspect of her marginalisation is being addressed (gender). Subsequently, she may not be able to avail herself of any initiatives at all.
There is an opportunity for future agricultural development projects to avoid the occurrence of maladaptation if it is normalised to have a greater inclusion of all marginalised groups within their initiatives.