Pairwise ranking in Ethiopia

An IIED/IDS team consisting of Gordon Conway, Robert Chambers and Jennifer McCracken recently ran an RRA workshop in Wollo Province for the Ethiopian Red Cross. It was primarily intended as a demonstration of the ~value of RRA methods in formulating development plans for Peasant Associations (PA). The fieldwork was carried out in two PA’s - Gobeya and Abicho. The theme of the workshop was diversification and we spent some time trying to obtain the views of the peasants on the virtues and drawbacks of different crops and tree species. One technique we developed was pairwise ranking and the following are extracts from our report which describe the procedure.