Africa

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A maise farmer in her fields last year. This year small-scale farmers are anxiously waiting for an impasse between government and private traders to be resolved so they can get their subsidised fertiliser. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Malawi, Nov 29 2021 (IPS)

Ellena Joseph, a small-scale maize farmer in Chiradzulu District in Southern Malawi, finished preparing her field early in October.

As the first rains start falling in some parts of the country, her anxiety is growing because she is yet to purchase fertiliser because she does not have any money.

Joseph, 63, is one of the 3.7 million farmers the government targets to benefit under the 2021 Agricultural Input Programme (AIP).

In this programme, the government subsidises fertiliser and seeds for small-scale producers who make up more than 80 percent of farmers in Malawi.

The programme has been running since 2005, and every year, it is saddled with challenges – like corruption, non-availability of goods at sales points and delivery hitches.

This year, these challenges are compounded by a rise in prices of fertiliser which shot up by nearly 100 percent.

The impact of the increase has trickled down to the farmers. For every $23 in government subsidies for a 50kg bag of fertiliser, the farmers are contributing about $9. Last year they paid $5.4.

And Joseph is feeling the weight of that rise on her shoulders. First, she needs money to redeem her two bags of fertiliser.

Then, because chaos is the norm at the agro-dealer shop in her area, she has to bribe the clerks or pay some youths to stand in the queue on her behalf. The more the days and nights they stand in the line for her, the more the money she needs to fork out.

Once she buys the fertiliser, she will have to hire a motorbike to transport the commodity to her home, some 17km away.

In total, she needs at least $28 to meet these expenses.

“I don’t have that kind of money, and I don’t know where to get it from,” she tells IPS. “I hope by the time the fertiliser comes, I will have found the money.”

In the previous years, she relied on the government-funded public works programme to earn a small wage. For the past two years, there haven’t been any projects in her area.

Amid the perennial challenges rocking the food subsidy programme intended to ensure food security in Malawi, the rise in fertiliser prices has been the most dramatic.

It all began in June, soon after Parliament passed the national budget in which the government allocated $172,000 towards the programme, targeting 3.7 million farmers – the same number as last year.

Following the hike in price on the global market, the cost of fertiliser increased in the country. Malawi was hit hard. It relies on imports because it does not have a fertiliser manufacturing plant.

In reaction, the Ministry of Agriculture, the implementing agency of the flagship food security programme, announced it would trim the number of beneficiaries.

“Due to financial constraints and the rising prices of fertiliser, the ministry, after looking into these two compound challenges, has decided to have AIP beneficiaries scaled down. It is therefore very necessary that the scaling down of the beneficiaries be done up to village level,” said the ministry’s secretary Sandram Maweru in a circular dated July 21, 2021 and addressed to all 28 district commissioners.

The ministry recommended specific figures from every district, resulting in fewer beneficiaries totalling 2.7 million.

But a week after the district commissioner had submitted the revised data to the ministry, on August 21, President Lazarus Chakwera overturned the decision of his agriculture officials. He directed that no one who was on the list last year could be taken off.

“I will not allow anyone to remove any family or village from the list of beneficiaries,” he said.

And so began a tug of war between the government and private traders.

While the private traders insisted they would need to sell the fertiliser at the new prices, which would have outstripped the budget allocated, the government accused the private traders of inflating the prices to sabotage the programme.

It told them it would buy their fertiliser for AIP at $29 per 50kg bag instead of the $43.6 per 50 kg which the private traders had set for it.

Efforts to resolve the standoff did not yield results. Last week, 13 of the 164 traders the government had engaged had not signed contracts to supply the fertiliser. This amounts to close to a million bags of fertiliser.

In a statement in Parliament on November 18, Minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe insisted it was up to the traders to take it or leave it while admitting that only 10 percent of the targeted 371,000 metric tonnes had been procured.

The private traders account for 66 percent of the commodity, while two public agencies supply 34 percent for the programme.

However, the fact that 151 traders have signed the contract does not guarantee that the fertiliser will be supplied, indicates Mbawaka Phiri, Executive Administration Officer for the Fertiliser Association of Malawi, a grouping of the private traders.

“Caution must be taken to not assume that all 151 traders have stock and can supply. Many of those who have signed contracts are still having difficulty procuring stock,” she says.

According to Phiri, some private traders have decided not to participate in the programme this year because the AIP fertiliser price is too low to do business.

Traders are not obliged to sign the government’s contract offer – that is a business decision.

“However, it is also up to the government to decide whether the programme can be successful without the participation of suppliers from the private sector. Last year’s programme was successful mainly due to the participation of private suppliers who were able to deliver larger amounts of fertiliser in a very short period and to all areas of the country,” she says.

Agriculture policy expert, Tamani Nkhono-Mvula, says in general, the implementation of the programme this year has not been satisfactory.

“This is November, and we have less than 10 percent of the fertiliser supplied when we were supposed to have at least 50 percent of the farmers reached by mid-October. Once rains start in a matter of weeks, that will compound the logistical challenges we already have,” he says.

He says the programme is crucial because it targets low-income farmers who cannot afford the farm inputs, but its management is concerning.

“It seems the programme has become a way for some people to make money. They would love to see chaos in the programme because that is the way they are able to benefit,” says Nkhono-Mvula.

 

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“I belong to a marginalized sector of my country where educated women are confined into four walls in rural settings”. Photo courtesy of Tahir Watto Credit: UN Women

By Kathryn Imboden and Naeha Rashid
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 29 2021 (IPS)

Many women in Pakistan remain financially excluded. In 2020, only 7% of the female population had a formal account.

One of the reasons for this is that agent networks — the bridge between the cash economy and digital financial services — remain largely inaccessible to many women. Approaching policy and regulation through a gender-intentional lens that considers prevailing social norms can help regulators affect positive change in this arena.

Agent networks are recognized as a powerful enabler for the expansion of digital financial services to low-income populations, particularly in rural areas. They can increase access to financial services by lowering the cost of delivery in otherwise hard-to-reach areas.

Agents can also support women during onboarding and use of digital financial services. However, agent networks are part of a market system deeply influenced by social norms and policies that may perpetuate or exacerbate gender inequalities.

The reality is that women often don’t have equal access to agent banking.

Between 2017 and 2020, the financial inclusion gender gap has not narrowed but rather grown from 13 to 29 percentage points, according to the Financial Inclusion Insights survey. Qualitative field research indicates that this constitutes a major barrier to women’s financial inclusion.

Women avoid dealing with male agents due to social norms that restrict non-familial interaction and mobility. If more women were agents, this may not be such an issue. However, just 1 in 100 agents in Pakistan is a woman.

The same norms that limit women’s use of agents, along with other norms such as restrictions in work outside the home and access to technology, make it difficult for women to become agents.

To better understand these norms and support policy makers and regulators in identifying responses that can advance women’s digital financial inclusion more effectively, CGAP explored the interplay between gendered social norms and the four basic regulatory enablers for digital financial services, including the use of agents.

We started our analysis by identifying the financial behaviors that women currently exhibit in the market and tracked associated social norms and barriers underlying such behaviors. Then we looked at how existing regulations consider the norms at play and address, ignore or even reinforce them.

Analyzing the problem and ideating responses

Using this process, we identified two behaviors related to the issue of women and agents.

The first is that women rarely become agents. Core requirements to become an agent include cellphone ownership, high-school level equivalent literacy, and openness to frequent interaction with an organization’s staff, which is often predominantly men.

However, social norms restrict women’s ability to work outside home, interact with people outside the family, and access technology. The perception that women are at greater risk than men when it comes to issues such as robbery and fraud makes it even harder to find willing and able participants.

The second behavior we focused on was that women avoid dealing with male agents independently. We found that this is largely a result of societal limitations in non-familial interaction and limited mobility.

Taken together, these behaviors present a challenge for women’s financial inclusion: it’s easier for women to engage with other women while using digital financial services, but few women are willing or able to serve as agents.

Up to now, regulations did not explicitly account for these limitations. Key guidelines, such as 2016’s agent acquisition and management framework, do not have a gender angle.

The requirement that all agents have a Level 2 account (the highest tier available) and the associated paperwork is not realistic for many women. It serves as one example of how regulations can unintentionally contribute to the gender gap.

The forthcoming gender-intentional “Banking on Equality” policy is a positive step, and the State Bank of Pakistan has recently taken concrete measures to address the issue.

In September 2021 the State Bank of Pakistan became one of the first regulators globally to introduce a new instruction that mandates a minimum proportion of female agents.

The instruction states that “All Branchless banking providers shall formulate a clear and well-documented ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Agents Strategy’ duly approved by its Board, with a goal to reach 10% women in their agent portfolio by 2024 with interim milestones of 4% for the end of 2022 and 7% for 2023.”

This is a promising measure, but it is largely provider centric. It does not propose regulatory changes to make it easier for women to become agents or address the structural issues that women face in dealing with male agents.

This type of analysis leads to several recommendations for policy makers and regulators, adding an additional dimension to current gender-positive efforts such as the soon-to-be-finalized “Banking on Equality” policy.

To create widescale change, policies and regulations must consider and address the social norms that limit women’s participation in agent banking. Critically, the “right” agent model has the potential to increase women’s access to financial services — especially low-income women — by simultaneously accounting for and possibly shifting social norms. Our suggested responses include:

• Conducting additional research into the factors leading to the low number of female agents and better understanding the agent-customer experience from a female perspective

• Reviewing and adjusting existing agent guidelines to develop a comprehensive gender-intentional agent framework, potentially incorporating the following:

o Adjusted guidelines for recruiting female agents to make it easier for women to participate, including targets around the minimum percentage of female agents that should comprise the network and collecting sex-disaggregated data on agents
o Changes that could make the prospect of becoming an agent both easier and more attractive to women, such as tiering agents by service type and adjusting know-your-customer (KYC) requirements accordingly
o Introducing steps that would facilitate the contributions agents can make to support female customers, such as requiring the development of female-centric induction programs and ensuring adequacy of financial consumer protection

• Exploring the role that roving agents (permitted during COVID-19) can play in increasing women’s financial inclusion, and considering extending permission for this agent category

By accounting for social norms and being gender-intentional, policy makers and regulators can make adjustments to policy and regulatory formulation to advance women’s digital financial inclusion.

Kathryn Imboden is Senior Financial Sector Specialist at CGAP and Naeha Rashid is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and of McGill University.

Source: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP)

CGAP is an independent think tank that works to empower poor people, especially women, to capture opportunities and build resilience through financial services. Housed at the World Bank, CGAP is supported by over 30 leading development organizations committed to making financial services meet the needs of poor people.

 

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The agreement outlines the biases that AI technologies can “embed and exacerbate” and their potential impact on “human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, gender equality, democracy … and the environment and ecosystems.”

By SWAN
PARIS, Nov 26 2021 (IPS)

The member states of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have agreed on a text of recommended ethics for artificial intelligence (AI) that states can apply on a “voluntary” basis.

The adopted text, which the agency calls “historic”, outlines the “common values and principles which will guide the construction of the necessary legal infrastructure to ensure the healthy development of AI,” UNESCO says.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay. Credit: AM/SWAN

The text states that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations.

The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents – including writers and artists. Governments and multinational companies have also used personal data and AI technology to infringe on privacy.

While such states and entities were not named, UNESCO officials acknowledged that the discussions leading up to the adopted text had included “difficult conversations”.

Presenting the agreement Nov. 25 at the organization’s headquarters in Paris, UNESCO’s Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the initiative to have an AI ethics framework had been launched in 2018.

“I remember that many thought it would be extremely hard if not impossible to attain common ground among the 193 states … but after these years of work, we’ve been rewarded by this important victory for multilateralism,” Azoulay told journalists.

She pointed out that AI technology has been developing rapidly and that it entails a range of profound effects that comprise both advantages to humanity and wide-ranging risks. Because of such impact, a global accord with practical recommendations was necessary, based on input from experts around the world, Azoulay stressed.

The accord came during the 41st session of UNESCO’s General Conference, which took place Nov. 9 to 24 and included the adoption of “key agreements demonstrating renewed multilateral cooperation,” UNESCO said.

The text states that AI systems “should not be used for social scoring and mass surveillance purposes,” among other recommendations. The organization’s 193 member states include countries, however, that are known to use AI and other technologies to carry out such surveillance, often targeting minorities and dissidents - including writers and artists

While the accord does not provide a single definition of AI, the “ambition” is to address the features of AI that are of “central ethical relevance,” according to the text.

These are the features, or systems, that have “the capacity to process data and information in a way that resembles intelligent behaviour, and typically includes aspects of reasoning, learning, perception, prediction, planning or control,” it said.

While the systems are “delivering remarkable results in highly specialized fields such as cancer screening and building inclusive environments for people with disabilities”, they are equally creating new challenges and raising “fundamental ethical concerns,” UNESCO said.

The agreement outlines the biases that AI technologies can “embed and exacerbate” and their potential impact on “human dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms, gender equality, democracy … and the environment and ecosystems.”

According to UNESCO, these types of technologies “are very invasive, they infringe on human rights and fundamental freedoms, and they are used in a broad way.”

The agreement stresses that when member states develop regulatory frameworks, they should “take into account that ultimate responsibility and accountability must always lie with natural or legal persons” – that is, humans – “and that AI systems should not be given legal personality” themselves.

“New technologies need to provide new means to advocate, defend and exercise human rights and not to infringe them,” the agreement says.

Among the long list of goals, UNESCO said that the accord aims to ensure that digital transformations contribute as well to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” (a UN blueprint to achieve a “better and more sustainable future” for the world).

“We see increased gender and ethnic bias, significant threats to privacy, dignity and agency, dangers of mass surveillance, and increased use of unreliable AI technologies in law enforcement, to name a few. Until now, there were no universal standards to provide an answer to these issues,” UNESCO stated.

Regarding climate change, the text says that member states should make sure that AI favours methods that are resource- and energy-efficient, given the impact on the environment of storing huge amounts of data, which requires energy. It additionally asks governments to assess the direct and indirect environmental impact throughout the AI system life cycle.

On the issue of gender, the text says that member states “should ensure that the potential for digital technologies and artificial intelligence to contribute to achieving gender equality is fully maximized.”

It adds that states “must ensure that the human rights and fundamental freedoms of girls and women, and their safety and integrity are not violated at any stage of the AI system life cycle.”

Alessandra Sala, director of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at Shutterstock and president of the non-profit organization Women in AI – who spoke at the presentation of the agreement – said that the text provides clear guidelines for the AI field, including on artistic, cultural and gender issues.

“It is a symbol of societal progress,” she said, emphasizing that understanding the ethics of AI was a shared “leadership responsibility” which should include women’s often “excluded voices”.

In answer to concerns raised by journalists about the future of the recommendations, which are essentially non-binding, UNESCO officials said that member states realize that the world “needs” this agreement and that it was a step in the right direction.

 

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