Deepening gender responsive agricultural research skills of NARs in Sub-Saharan Africa

While training courses remain a central focus to the Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) program, towards the end of 2021 GREAT training courses were complemented by a call for research proposals for small grants. 

In addition to grant funding, GREAT provides mentorship to exemplary GREAT fellows to further deepen the capacity of agricultural researchers to conduct gender responsive and transformative research across Africa and beyond. Through this research opportunity, the teams are applying what they have learned through their participation in GREAT introductory and advanced courses.

Five teams, or research clusters, were selected and awarded funding to conduct their research in Ghana, Uganda, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

1. The Women’s Empowerment, Masculinities & Social Norms research cluster is conducting research in Uganda on how women’s empowerment and masculinities have been conceptualized in agriculture, research and development interventions.
2. Uganda is Piloting the G+ Tools in the Groundnut Value Chain. The research team is working on documenting the gendered trait preferences along the groundnut value chain and developing a groundnut product profile using the G+ tool.
3. in Ghana another research team is Piloting the G + Tools for the Rice Value Chain in Ghana.
4. A research cluster in Nigeria is looking at Stressors and Resilience within the Cassava Value Chain in Imo, Osun and Benue states.
5. A research cluster in Zimbabwe is Exploring the Trade-offs and Synergies between Gender Equality and Productivity. This team led by the Crop Breeding Institute in Zimbabwe is exploring the trade offs that bean breeding programs may make when segmenting for different priorities (e.g. gender equality, nutrition, trade/commercialization, food security and poverty).

Over the next few months, the teams will continue to receive mentorship and technical support by a team of GREAT trainers from Makerere faculty, Cornell faculty and a postdoc, and CGIAR senior gender experts who will work with the teams to refine their research questions and methodologies, and provide technical support throughout data collection, data analysis and synthesis of findings. The research findings will then be disseminated with the broader agriculture research community in the coming months.

Related:
The International Association of Agricultural Economists through the International Committee on Women in Agricultural Economics is launching a mentoring program for women agricultural economists from the global South. The program will be led by AWARD.

IAAE is currently inviting applications for people to participate in this mentoring program. Mentees should be women with a PhD in agricultural economics (or a related economics field). It is also seeking expressions of interest from those who would be interested in being mentors. The mentors will receive training on how to be an effective mentor.

AWARD-ICWAE Mentoring Program - International Association of Agricultural Economists (iaae-agecon.org)

For more information contact icwaementoring@gmail.com