Emerging and on-going research indicates that vulnerabilities to impacts of climate change are gendered. Still, policy approaches aimed at strengthening local communities' adaptive capacity largely fail to recognize the gendered nature of everyday realities and experiences. This paper interrogates some of the emerging evidence in selected semi-arid countries of Africa and Asia from a gender perspective, using water scarcity as an illustrative example. It emphasizes the importance of moving beyond the counting of numbers of men and women to unpacking relations of power, of inclusion and exclusion in decision-making, and challenging cultural beliefs that have denied equal opportunities and rights to differently positioned people, especially those at the bottom of economic and social hierarchies. Such an approach would make policy and practice more relevant to people's differentiated needs and responses.
This article is informed by the Implementing the Third Mission of Universities in Africa (ITMUA) which was an 18 months Action Research collaborative regional research project incepted January 2010 to August 2011. It was a Support Project of the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in Africa, and the Association of African Universities (AAU), Accra under the Mobilizing Regional Capacity Initiative (MRCI). During the three staged Action Research Project, 10 work packages were completed. The four universities which were part of the ITMUA project provide testimony and point of contact that African universities can work together on collaborative projects that depict university service to communities in their regions. A conclusion drawn from the impact assessment journal prepared during the life of the project suggests that there are positive evidence based initiatives to write about selected African universities that have fruitfully brought the 18 months collaborative engagement research project to a fruitful completion.
Agriculture continues to be the backbone of peasant economy and a source of subsistence in Botswana, and as such, innovative agricultural programs are introduced to benefit villagers. The case described in this chapter is that of Gamolele/Gakgatla watershed agro-forestry project, whose goal was to raise awareness of the existence of the six hectare plot and how it could be turned into viable agro-forestry and horticulture ventures mainly for sources of livelihood for community and its neighborhood. Technologies used during the life of the project included a computer and other modern ways of planting. Participants emerged with survival skills like knowledge of planting in rows, transplanting of seedlings and harvesting in rows, medicinal plants production, harnessing, and promotion of growing healthy foods by seasons. Participants learned to manage, use, and maintain technology by quick fixes or taking it to experts for more complex troubleshooting and final repairs. Overall, the emphasis was on attracting women to be part of experiencing using ICT in agro- forestry businesses, and this project successfully did this. This chapter thus shares experiences and lessons learned from the involvement of women together with challenges facing their involvement.
<p><em>This article serves to illuminate that Botswana’s political landscape in the last 49 years has been very dramatic in the trend of women’s visibility in cabinet and parliament. Post independence trends indicate non-existence of women in the first Botswana parliament, a gradual increase in the number of women in parliament during the 1990s, ranging from 5 to 8, and a sharp collapse in the last decade to only 6 in 2</em><em>014 (Botswana Gazette, 2014)</em><em>.</em><em> </em><em>Women, just like men, need to be groomed to be politically literate and aggressive to make a transition and compete with their male counterparts for parliamentary and cabinet seats. Women’s political illiteracy and history of being invisible in Southern African parliaments, particularly the highest decision-making organ of the Government of Botswana, is evident, based on numbers. Politics has remained a male province, with very few women as cabinet ministers or members of parliament. </em></p><p><em>Based on an analysis of trends in the political landscape in Botswana, political ethnography, historiography and the Critical Third World Feminist Theory, the authors argue that lack of political literacy and patriotism are major sources of women’s failure to make it to parliament. These pose implications for accelerated role of Adult Continuing and lifelong education of women in politics to raise their level of political literacy.</em></p>
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