Development, 2010, 53(3), (421–424) r 2010 Society for International Development 1011-6370/10 www.sidint.org/development/

Local/Global Encounters

Sustaining Women’s and Community’s Livelihoods in Rural Tanzania

MWAJUMA MASAIGANAH

ABSTRACT Mwajuma Masaiganah looks at activities done by Bagamoyo Women Development Network linking the social and care economy. Her article is based on her work and involvement with women in these rural communities. She explains why the care and social economy should be supported as a third system of economic model that can sustain women’s and community’s livelihoods. KEYWORDS credit; agriculture; sustainable development; HIV and AIDS; culture; education

Women’s economic situation in Tanzania Over 70 percent of women are food providers in Africa.1 According to government figures, in Tanzania, over 90 percent of rural women are active in agriculture and they constitute over 57 percent of the labour force producing 60 percent of domestic food. Agriculture contributes over 50 percent of the GDP and accounts for about 60 percent of the countries foreign earnings. Women are the backbone of community activities especially when communities get together for weddings and funerals etc.). The economic crisis has pushed women into entrepreneurship activities filling the gaps in family economies. Although attempts have been made to include women into government policy such as the Tanzania Development Vision 2025, which seeks to transform to create a vibrant and dynamic agricultural sector through utilization of the locally available resources, resources put aside for this, do not reach women in rural areas. Even if they might hear of Kilimo Kwanza meaning Agriculture in the Forefront they are not given a role in the Kilimo Kwanza. Around 41 percent of rural women in Tanzania are illiterate compared to 23 percent of men. There are only 6 percent of girls in technical and vocational institutions. According to the International Labour Organization, women headed households increased from 17 percent to 22.9 percent, and are more vulnerable to poverty.

Voices from BAWODENE BAWODENE started as a network to bring women together to address social and economic issues from the village level up. Most of its members undertake entrepreneur and farming activities. The following is a series of interviews that I undertook with the Development (2010) 53(3), 421–424. doi:10.1057/dev.2010.36

Development 53(3): Local/Global Encounters women from BAWODENE in order to understand how they perceive their own contribution to sustaining livelihoods: Q.What do you understand by the word ‘economy’? A. It is an income from any legal activity. Activities that one does to get income, be it agriculture, livestock keeping, petty trading, selling fruits, etc. Q. How was the women’s situation 15 years ago? And how is it now? A. We were poor. Roads in villages were impassable. Our children were dressing badly; we did dress badly too.We lived and slept in pathetic conditions. We did not know anything about family planning; we just had children without considering what their future will be. Now we are strong, we dare to do the right things. Women are leaders in our societies. We have a vision of what we want and where we want to be.We attend seminars and contribute without fear. We know what education is and so we send our children to school, even children from poor families attend school. Q.What activities do women do to contribute to family and country economy? A.We are active in agriculture, contribute to food security, we do petty trading by doing Mama Lishe activities meaning street cooking of soup, food, tea, frying and selling fish. Also they do livestock keeping, fishing, pottery, sculpture, selling milk, making batik, painting, hair plaiting, mat making, fruit canning, horticulture, seaweed farming, embroidery, selling beads and sewing. Q. How do you benefit from the income that you get? A. We now contribute to the upkeep of our families by paying school fees for our children, we buy soap, buy clothes for the families, pay hospital expenses, buy food and we contribute even to building houses.We were sleeping on very bad beds but now we have decent beds. Generally, we live better lives now compared to when we depended only on men to provide.

Strategies for change During the interviews I found that the last ques422 tion raised a lot of discussion and some of the

men who attended the dialogue also contributed. In many meetings where women’s concerns are discussed, men rarely participate as they say it only concerns women. Q. In order to have a better life than what we have now, what are the strategies that we have to put in place in order to bring about change? A.  To start more group projects so that we can bring about more development.  Many strategies have been put in place but very little has been accomplished; we have to be able to support ourselves. How long are we to wait for people to come and support us? We should not sit aside and make useless noise; we have opportunities that we can use. We have brains, eyes and hands to work with. Let’s support ourselves to develop our skills. We are called to development meetings and we do not attend. Let’s break the roots of jealousy and hostility from today and act to bring about sustainable development for women.  We need to love each other, we know that there are many challenges that women meet, but we have to learn to be strong and believe in ourselves that we can. Let’s become an example to other women.  We have decided to be born again, we have to be active and quick to act.  Countries with good development did that through educating its population first, considering the nation down to family level. We have to know how we strategize. Children have to be the starter for development. Families especially mothers have to change their perspective on the girls education, to be in the forefront for the girl child education, to support a child have a vision on what the child wants to be. As parents, when a child comes back from school, we should show interest by asking what they did at school and checking the exercise books.Without eradicating illiteracy, development will be a dream.

Successes, community accountability and micro credit BAWODENE has trained leaders at village, ward and district level. Leaders of the villages and

Masaiganah: Women’s Livelihoods in Rural Tanzania wards oversee small groups doing various activities including: agriculture, tailoring, embroidery, handicrafts (mats, batiks, baskets, pottery, jewellery, etc.), fish drying, coconut oil processing, seaweed farming, rice-growing, cashew nut processing, poultry keeping, bread-making, honeymaking and sculpturing. BAWODENE provides women without collateral with opportunities to access credit. This financial support is supplemented by training on management skills, accountability and selfsustainability in order to give women in business the opportunity to realize their personal aspirations. Accountability therefore stays within the community as a way to create sustainable economic development. The organization receives money through members’ contributions and from the Women Development Fund of the District Council. In collaboration with Action Aid Tanzania, BAWODENE has offered training on entrepreneurship and legal rights training and discussions to its members. Tanzania Women Lawyers Association have contributed by giving free legal services to BAWODENE women members and also have worked with us through Action Aid Tanzania to train women on legal rights. Wanawake na Maendeleo contributed towards sending members to attend the Tanzania Gender Network Annual Conference where they made a mark, by learning, sharing and displaying and selling their art crafts.

Challenges BAWODENE has supported women in capacity building, rights, social and economic well-being and social justice training, but there are more challenges than successes. When starting the organization, the number of members reached 1,010 and currently the number stands at slightly above 800. Women joined in big numbers because they had hopes that BAWODENE would take them away from doing only house chores of fetching fuel wood, water, reproductive and unpaid activities. Being a rural NGO with little or no influence on financial institutions, to date BAWODENE has not managed to meet the members’expectations. Only

36 members have accessed credit to a total of TShs. 28,150,000 (US $ 24,692.98). Women were unable to access credit because women do not own unmovable, they lack business skills, access to information about markets and transport. This becomes a vicious cycle as without the credit, they produce low quality material in order to sell and earn quick money. These inferior and poor quality goods cannot compete with the goods coming from countries such as China. Even if these goods are not of high quality they sell easily and cheaply so that local batik for example cannot compete.

Women in the era of HIV/AIDS in relation to culture and poverty HIV/AIDS is one of the contributing factors to weakening the population and reducing the production towards sustainable development. In 2008, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) were 1.4 million, out of these 760,000 were women and 140,000 were children. Currently, there are 1,600 females, 400 males and 352 children on antiretrovirals. Women are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, and production is affected as women are the majority doing agriculture production. According to one Maasai woman in Bagamoyo the reason for high infection rates in their communities are due to ‘Polygamous marriages y Other reasons might be poverty; poor education among society members especially women; men do not use or are not interested in using condoms. There is a more serious charge by women of the Maasai clan who complained bitterly about culture being one of the factors contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS. Culture in this community allows women to be raped with no complaints. Another embarrassing culture is when in a family, if a woman is married and a husband travels; the brothers takes over the woman, having sex with her (one brother to the other), until when the man comes back and he cannot complain because the wife is considered family property. Still, when a person is sick, they are not ready to speak out about their HIV/AIDS status so they can continue infecting other people. They take tests in another area far from home; hiding their status and continuing to spread HIV and AIDS. There should be a way that people speak out about their status. In this case women find 423

Development 53(3): Local/Global Encounters themselves being infected more and also they are the ones being affected more as there are in cases like this; more orphans created and women become carers of these orphans, uncles, brothers aunts. All these affect the production chain of a community, and thus reduce our contribution to the family economies because we spend more than we produce and earn’. (Soyoi Lalai, from the Maasai community Fukayosi village;7 March 2010)

Hopes for the future BAWODENE’s dream is for a women’s centre that would include a learning facility to provide women with courses in business, computer literacy, health education and English. The women’s centre would also offer aid to victims (women and girls) of domestic violence, rape and abuse that are very rampant in the district. A major need is for women to access credit facilities that have lower interest rates with friendly policies for the poor to access financial

institutions. This would require more education on women’s economic role in development. Improving agriculture is the vehicle for any development in Africa and including Tanzania. Policies should take into consideration the involvement of women in making decisions that affect the agricultural sector including enabling women to have direct access to marketing and transport channels and to give training and improve the distribution of fertilizers and seeds in order to increase the yield and support societies to become self-sufficient in food stocks/food security situations. Despite women’s difficulties in accessing credit, lacking information on transport and markets, low-skilled personnel and low education standards; they are still the guiding pillars of society and the economy. It is critical to support women’s role in rural social and care economies in Tanzania if sustainable development is to be reached.

Note 1 Bagamoyo Women Development Network (BAWODEN) is a non-profit making organization established in the year 2003 in Bagamoyo District, with a constitution and legally registered on 4 July 2005 with registration No. 0885 under the NGO Act of 2001. Society members come from all over Bagamoyo District (91 villages). Its vision is to be a unique organization that provides women with equal opportunities on rights, equality, social justice and well-being. The methodologies that BAWODENE uses to empower its members are through a micro-credit loan program, Savings and Credit Cooperative Society, and promotion of income generating activities.

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