Economic Empowerment for Pastoralist Women: A Comparative Look at Program Experience in Uganda, Somaliland and Sudan

By John Livingstone & Everse Ruhindi

PENHA (the Pastoral & Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa) is a regional NGO, focused on pastoral development, operating across the Greater Horn, with offices in Uganda, Somaliland, Sudan and Eritrea. PENHA has a longstanding commitment to gender equality, with a strong public statement in its Nazareth (Ethiopia) Declaration of 1995, and a series of context-specific studies on gender and pastoralism. Subsequently, different PENHA country chapters pushed for increased attention to gender and efforts to promote social change, often against resistance from those wanting an almost exclusive focus on things such as animal health and water supply. There is now a broad consensus on the centrality of gender in development, but pastoralist women remain under-served by development agencies, the marginalized of the marginalized. In 2007, PENHA undertook a regional Women’s Economic Empowerment program, funded by DANIDA. The program covers selected pastoralist communities in Uganda, Somaliland and Sudan.