Goat - A Sustainable and Holistic Approach in Addressing Triple Challenges of Gender Inequality, Climate Change Effects, Food and Nutrition Insecurity in Rural Communities of Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Assan Never 
Published: March 2021

A goat-centered approach to farming can help shift rural agrarian households and communities toward gender-inclusive climate change adaptation in agriculture to enhance food security and nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Gender inequality, climate change, and food and nutrition insecurity are the most defining and deeply intertwined socioeconomic and environmental challenges in rural communities in this region. This chapter offers an overview of the potential of goat rearing as a sustainable and holistic approach to addressing these challenges. The failure to address gender inequality and climate change has thrown sub-Saharan Africa into a state of perpetual food scarcity due to compromised food production, consequently condemning rural communities and their people to extreme poverty and malnutrition. Because of this scenario, many internal and external development agencies have put several measures in place to alleviate the situation, which has long preyed upon the region and continues to frustrate food stability there. The total failure of the previous autonomous attempt to address the triple challenges of gender inequality climate change, and food and nutrition insecurity at the household level has led to the exploration and endorsement of more sustainable and multifaceted approaches. We propose that goat rearing is one such initiative, as it combines the empowerment of women in agriculture to ensure availability of the basic food needs of the household with sustained animal production due to goats’ ability to adapt to harsh environmental conditions. The goat-centered multifactorial approach is focused on the exploitation of the interlinkages among these socioeconomic and environmental ills. The major assumption is that goat rearing in rural economies simultaneously curtails the risk of food and nutrition insecurity by acting as an entry point of gender equality while leveraging the opportunities that goat rearing will effectively offset adversities posed by climate change. In most instances, women are potentially more vulnerable than men, as they directly experience the adverse effects of climate change in agricultural production, in turn compromising food and nutrition security. Goat rearing is central to the removal of systemic barriers that hold women back from equal participation in agriculture by broadening their socioeconomic opportunities, hence playing a significant role in agricultural value chains. The goat-rearing sustainability concept is based on establishing and maintaining the circumstances under which people and nature can subsist in productive harmony, which allows fulfilling the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations. Despite the adverse effects of climate change, the goat population has continued to proliferate in the harshest agroecological regions, which demonstrates that goats have managed to adapt to the current unfriendly environmental conditions. It is assumed that promoting goat rearing will narrow the gender equality gap between men and women and enhance the participation of women in agriculture, hence improving productivity and food and nutrition security. Goats, due to their large numbers and deep embedment in rural communities, have constantly contributed to poor rural farmers’ livelihoods in many ways, and their contributions tend to be significant. This chapter reviews the potential of goat rearing as a sustainable and holistic approach to addressing the triple challenges of gender inequality, climate change, and food insecurity in rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa.