Female Leadership in Ethiopia: helping women into leadership positions again

15 women and 12 men of Filagot primary cooperative, Angolela primary cooperative and Edget primary cooperative participated in this training, and even concerned government officials attended.

Filagot primary cooperative was established by women. However, at this moment the cooperative is led by men. This is due to the workload the female members have at their homes, and the time constraint to participate in the leadership activities of the cooperative. After this training, the women understand their gap in the cooperative. An action plan has been created that will help the women to get into leadership positions again. In addition to that, the participants planned to share a summary of the training with other female members of Filagot.

The other two cooperatives, Angolela primary cooperative and Edget primary cooperative prepared an action plan to recruit new female members by creating awareness in their neighbourhood, strengthening a gender committee, increasing the number of female members on the board, assigning female members to the milk collection centre, and create awareness when members come to deliver the milk.

As Female Leadership Trainer, Emnete Dilnessa is impressed by the performance of the members of the cooperatives. “These women have not done any training before. They simply come out of their homes. After the training, they are very energetic and have knowledge of what Female leadership means. Especially, during the formal and informal roles, when they identify the meanings of colors based on their behaviors, they are very impressed and suggested that it is useful to use it for their day-to-day life. I thought they will not understand me but they did it very well. In my conclusion, I observed that the Agriterra product Female Leadership Training approach is easily understood not only by literate people but also by farmers in the rural area of the country”.

Among the facilitators’ team was Dutch Agripool expert Adinda Roerink-Wissink. The participants were very impressed by her input, and they learned a lot. Her stories encouraged the participants: “if she can do it, why can’t we?”.