Thesis subject

Top-down or bottom-up? Facilitation of trainings to support farmers in Uganda

100weeks is a NGO that supports women with unconditional cash for 100 weeks, linked to training and saving groups. Initially the focus was on women in urban areas, but there is now a shift towards farmers (both men and women) especially in the cocoa sector.

On the one hand, the cocoa sector wants the cocoa producers to produce more and are therefore facilitating trainings (often paying farmers) to improve the agricultural practices of farmers. On the other hand, farmers have their own resource endowments and socio-economic context that impacts what they are doing or willing to do, with different goals then only to produce more cocoa.

Therefore we want to ask a more open question; what is the change process towards higher production, how can change in cocoa production best be stimulated and what does that mean for an NGO like 100weeks?

Starting date: asap
Preferred language: English
Location/country: Netherlands/Uganda
Supervisor: Harro Maat / Laurie van Reemst

Suitable for MID, MDR, MOA, and MCH students.

Research activities

Qualitative, desk research, interviews but with possibility to do field research and verification of outcomes in the field through focus group discussions or other data collection.