Livestock are more than productive assets—they are a critical source of income, nutrition, resilience, and opportunity for millions of people across Africa. Yet the benefits of livestock production are not experienced equally.
Women are at the heart of livestock care and yet they continue to face significant and persistent barriers to accessing veterinary services, inputs, finance, information, and decision-making power. Overlooking these gendered dynamics is not only detrimental to achieving equality —it also undermines the effectiveness, reach, and sustainability of livestock development efforts.
Recognising this, applying a gender lens to livestock programmes is not an optional add-on, but a strategic necessity. In 2025, GALVmed launched VITAL 2, a five-year programme to improve ruminant vaccination rates in Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria. The programme works through private sector-driven approaches to strengthen markets for high-quality vaccines while complementing government vaccination efforts. Crucially, VITAL 2 is a gender-intentional investment, designed to ensure that gender-related barriers and norms are identified and addressed so that women are not excluded from the benefits of ruminant vaccination as markets and delivery systems expand.
The gender component is fully integrated into VITAL 2’s delivery model, with the aim of improving understanding of the barriers and norms affecting vaccine uptake and identifying how project components can adapt to better include and benefit women.
A Structured and Evidence-Based Approach
The VITAL 2 gender plan includes targeted activities in selected sites that explore gender-transformative approaches. A three-country gender landscaping exercise in Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania will provide the foundation, mapping the technical and socio-institutional barriers to livestock vaccination, alongside the norms shaping these systems. It will also identify the most meaningful intersecting factor within in each community- such as age, ethnicity, religion, membership within cooperatives and conservancies – that shape women’s experiences and inform where gender transformative activities (GTAs) can be most effectively implemented.
Building on this, the targeted GTAs will be run in selected exemplar sites, where community dialogue and norm-shifting activities can be tested in structured environments. The purpose is to generate a comparative understanding of what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
Alongside these GTAs, an action research and evaluation agenda will track shifts in decision-making, household dynamics, participation in vaccination, and women’s ability to access services. A suite of gender indicators will be measured through baseline and endline surveys, supported by qualitative research that captures stories of change. This mixed methodology will allow VITAL 2 to monitor not only whether women are more involved in vaccination but also how these shifts are experienced and sustained within households and communities.
The insights from this research will offer practical evidence on norms and barriers, and potential responses that can inform VITAL 2 delivery teams and partners, while also contributing to a clearer understanding of how gender dynamics affect uptake in low-coverage contexts, ensuring women are not overlooked in the expansion of ruminant vaccination.
Integrating a gender lens into livestock programme design is not just a matter of equity—it is a pathway to more effective, sustainable, and impactful interventions that achieve stronger outcomes.
Gender-intentional programmes like VITAL 2 help ensure that livestock systems deliver benefits for everyone, enhancing animal health, productivity, resilience, and livelihoods across communities. By doing so, we move closer to livestock development that is inclusive, transformative, and capable of creating lasting impact.