DelPHE project empowers rural women in Ile Ife

On Thursday the 23rd of August in Ile Ife, about 30 stakeholders of the DelPHE 643 project themed African Women and Rural Environment (AWARE) met at the conference centre of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) to share experiences and report on the delivery of the project over the past three years.
The project outputs and lessons learned meeting was a two day event which began with the display of locally produced goods by the women beneficiaries at the University Faculty of Agriculture Pavillion where many of them made sales of various products such as Moringa Spice, Garri (a cassava beverage) and eggs. On the second day of the event, the project co-ordinators and field offices reported on the gains and challenges of the project over the course of three years.

The project had several component strands; development of commercial products from Moringa, Soya bean and use of bio–fuels. Professor Michael Faborode, the project co-ordinator, informed guests at the event that  the most successful have been the development of the Moringa plant into products such as tea leaves, spices, the use of Moringa seeds for water clarification and the use of organic waste in the production of bio–gas from a locally assembled bio-digester which then produces cooking gas.
The project team members reported that they were able to develop sustainable relationships with the community leaders and many of the bio-gas digesters are located at the residences of the local chiefs. These relationships ensured that they were able to work harmoniously with the women groups. Some of the courses attended by the women had an average attendance of 46 over the three months period. A total of about 500 rural women were involved in the project.
Some of the rural women involved in the project have been assisted to register with the World Bank FADAMA III project; these women groups will be given resources in kind such as farming equipment worth about £1600 per group. In this way the women will be able to become much more commercially viable even after the DelPHE project comes to an end in 2013.
The University’s Deputy Vice- Chancellor Prof. A .T Salami who was at the event as a special guest noted that the outputs of the project were commendable and needed to be communicated to the entire university community for knowledge sharing.
Prof. Faborode informed the group of plans to hand over the project to the government at the end of the cycle and he hopes to take the principles of the project to Ondo State to help spread the impact. A sustainable delivery framework is now being developed to assist in the pilot of similar projects by the project team.
The DelPHE 643 project is delivered as a partnership between OAU andNewcastle UniversityUK. The project focussed on empowering rural women through developing their entrepreneurial skills to enable them sustainable produce and sell local produce. Rural women in Osun andOyoStateswere trained to become entrepreneurs at the projects Strategic Development Training Centres (STDC).
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The Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) is a DFID funded project which enables higher education institutions to act as catalysts for poverty reduction and sustainable development by strengthening research, teaching and consultancy bases and promoting the attainment of crucial Millennium Development Goals (MDG)

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