Digital Support for Women Beekeeper Entrepreneurs

The AID-CSB project, launched in 2021, is an innovative digital initiative in Ethiopia and Uzbekistan led by ICARDA’s MEL team and HiveTracks. It aims to narrow the gender digital divide, support rural women’s livelihoods, and promote biodiversity through beekeeping as an opportunity for income-generating environmentally sustainable activities. The project follows three impact pathways to women’s empowerment: inclusivity and women-led design, digital access and literacy, and awareness building. 

Beekeeping requires substantial knowledge of bee management practices, regular support from local experts, and robust monitoring, documentation, and planning skills. Access to such information can help farmers and their communities become climate-resilient by offering ways to adapt practices to new climatic realities. To support existing women beekeepers to grow in these skills and encourage more women to enter the sector, the AID-CSB project worked with women beekeepers in the first year of the project to develop the HiveTracks application, a smartphone app ‘localized’ to their specific contexts, to support beekeepers’ hive management practices and improve honey production.