Contract farming is growing rapidly in Eastern Africa. This research project will evaluate innovations in contract farming operations designed to increase the benefits wives accrue from the contract. It also evaluates whether this improves the relationship between the household and the firm. It integrates a gender dimension into an otherwise gender-blind area of practice and research. Contract farming is a form of vertical integration within agricultural commodity chains such that a firm has greater control over the production process and final product. Changes in the demand for and supply of agricultural products have increased the popularity of this form of vertical integration in many low-income countries and it is attracting considerable policy and academic attention. While academic work in the 1980s and 1990s offered a mixed assessment of the extent to which contract farming engaged with and benefited smallholders, recent literature offers a much more positive interpretation of smallholder participation. That said, there are still considerable risks for both firms and farms such that contracting operations frequently collapse. For firms, there is a large risk of smallholders side-marketing both inputs and produce. There are also numerous risks for small-scale producers. Two risks are especially important for smallholders: contracting can contribute to a loss of autonomy and control over farm enterprises and a form of dependency on the contracting firm; and, second, the intra-household distribution of labour/income can be altered to the detriment of women's interests. This research project focuses on the last of these risks through evaluating innovations that seek to both increase wives' benefits and to improve the relationships between the firm and the household. This is through adding gender-specific elements to the contract to increase the 'self-enforcement range'. By this we mean that by adding these extra investments within the contract we reduce the likelihood of either party breaking the deal due to a change in market or contextual conditions. The overarching research question is: To what extent and how do gender-specific clauses within contracts improve outcomes for both farms and firms? The subsidiary research questions are: To what extent and how do gender-specific clauses improve the benefits wives accrue from contract farming operations? To what extent and how do such clauses influence farm production? And to what extent and how do such clauses improve the stability and longevity of contract farming relationships? In Malawi, we evaluate the inclusion of a contract for wives to grow and market groundnuts (a conventional crop for women to produce) alongside tobacco to examine effects on yields, prices and, most importantly, the intra-household distribution of labour/income. We do this by combining a randomized design - where members and clubs are randomly assigned the innovation - with a series of qualitative research methods including life history interviews and focus group discussions. The attrition rate (in other words, the number of households dropping from the scheme) will assess whether the farm/firm relationship has changed. In Tanzania, we utilise the same methodology and sequence of research methods but the precise contractual innovation will be determined during the first two months of the project. In the second phase of research, we extend the project to examine gender-specific innovations in palm oil in Ghana and tobacco in Zimbabwe.

This research is exploring practical ways in which citizens in low income countries can hold their local leaders to account for their performance in delivering basic services and in reducing poverty. In recent years there have been great efforts to decentralise the delivery of services and political power to the local level. The assumption behind this being that this would make service delivery more responsive to local needs. In reality this has sometimes led to local leaders and richer people being able to take control of resources and services. There has been some research that shows that when local people, and particularly those from poorer and more marginalised groups, have access to information about their rights and the performance of local government and other service delivery agencies then they are better able to demand improvements and fairness in accessing services. They are also better able to challenge corrupt practices. There has also been some helpful recent work in using national level data on government performance in order to hold national governments to account. Some of these include the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index, World Governance Indicators, Open Budget Index and Afrobarometer. This project, the idea for which comes from an important civil society activist organisation in Tanzania, proposes to adapt the ideas from these national indices to the local level. This project, which involves a partnership between a Tanzanian University, The Foundation for Civil Society in Tanzania and the International NGO Research And Training Centre (INTRAC), Oxford, will use a participatory process in 3 local government areas in Tanzania to create a locally meaningful governance index. The project will then pilot and test this index as a tool for citizen engagement and improvement in local service delivery and governance performance over a period of 3 years. The project will use a range of traditional and social media and public events to publicise the results from the index and enable citizens to engage with local leaders. However, it will not apply the same publicity tools in all areas in order to assess the impact of these tools. The project is interested in how the index might contribute to public dialogue and political change. It will be exploring the extent to which a local index can provide a tool to produce better access to local services and reductions in poverty. It is expected that the results of this research will benefit academic researchers and civil society actors working on the reduction of poverty in low income countries. It will also be of practical interest to national and local governments seeking to improve their performance in reducing poverty, as well as other organisations working on this issue.