Global Goal Five: Gender Equality

20th September 2019

A woman in field wearing pink

This Global Goal sets out to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. 

Tanzania is amongst the world’s top coffee producers.  Despite providing most of the labour, women coffee growers often don’t benefit equally from the income from sales.

A project in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania is working with men and women coffee farmers to challenge gender inequality. It hopes to make sure that women have an equal role in coffee growing and in deciding how income is spent.

Meet Neema, who has successfully secured a Manager role within a coffee co-operative, despite only 14% of its members being women.  With training and support, her co-operative has now attracted more young people to join. As a result, she benefits from the increase in their profits. More members mean more help for the cooperative to produce more coffee.  With the additional income, as well as new skills in financial planning and saving, Neema has been able to buy a plot of land on which she intends to build a house for her and her son.  

Neema is one of 150,000 women who have improved opportunities to enhance their income, thanks to the projects that Comic Relief and UK aid have jointly-funded since 2009 with your support.