Empowering women and building climate resilience with Habbanayé in Niger
Photo: Habbanayé beneficiary, Lelari village in the rural commune of Damagaram Takaya, southern Niger
Name: Daouda Adjata
Sex: female
Age: 39
Status: married with 9 children, including two daughters.
Village: Lelari in the commune of Damagaram Takaya
In 2022, Mrs Adjata received a Habbanayé goat kit. After a year of careful tending, the females gave birth and she has handed one female and one male to another woman in the village.
Mrs Adjata says she is very satisfied with the Habbanayé system, which has enabled her to maintain her smallholder farm and share the fruits of her labour with another woman.
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Habbanayé is an ancestral practice among pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Niger, which consists of lending reproductive adult livestock to family members, friends or acquaintances in vulnerable situations. The family receiving the loaned female assumes responsibility for them until their offspring are weaned. The loaned animals are then returned to their owner, while the recipient family retains the offspring.
In Niger, UN Capital Development Fund is unlocking the potential of Habbanayé to build community level resilience, empower women and reinforce community ties in a region that has seen a recent uptick in conflict.
The commune of Damagaram Takaya is one of 15 communes receiving UNCDF funds through the Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) in Niger. Local governments receive Performance-Based Climate Resilience Grants (PBCRG) for investment in climate change adaptation actions, identified and guided by the local community and their needs.
Residents chose to use their grant to purchase a breeding stock of goats, that are loaned out to vulnerable community members – usually women - through the traditional Habbanyé practice.
Photo: Habbanayé implementation, Lelari village, rural commune of Damagaram Takaya
In Damagaram Takaya, part of the grant was used to strengthen the economic empowerment of 40 vulnerable women in the commune. These women each received a goat kit consisting of three females and a male, provided according to the Habbanayé model. Before distribution to the beneficiaries, the goats, aged between nine and 15 months, were dewormed and vaccinated against the main epizootics prevalent in the region, which include plague, pasteurellosis and smallpox. They were also given a multivitamin supplementary treatment to ensure their good health and fitted with numbered ear tags for identification purposes.
After a year's breeding, the beneficiaries each returned a female and a billy-goat to the community management committee, which in turn made them available to other vulnerable families.
Through Habbanayé, funded through UNCDF's LoCAL mechanism, the women of Damagaram Takaya have boosted their food security with milk and meat from their livestock while earning additional income for their families. The women have strengthened their economic autonomy, diversified their sources of revenue and improved family living conditions. At the same time, the community are preserving a traditional practice that fosters solidarity and community cohesion, thus reducing the risk of conflict at local level.
Article and Photos: Idrissa Moussa, National Technical Advisor, UNCDF Niger 2024
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