Strengthening gender and youth-focused research: IITA GYSI team hosts inaugural CGIAR-NARES workshop

On 20 November, the IITA Gender, Youth, and Social Inclusion (GYSI) team organized its first CGIAR-NARES outreach program, titled ‘Strengthening gender and youth-focused research capabilities in agricultural research in Nigeria,’ held at the National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT) in Ibadan. This workshop attracted 50 participants from various National Agricultural Research and Extension Services (NARES), including the IITA team. It marked a significant step toward integrating gender and youth-focused methodologies into agricultural research, extension, and delivery to promote inclusive growth and innovation in Nigeria’s agrifood systems. Participating NARES were the National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI), NIHORT, the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), the Nigerian Institute Of Social And Economic Research (NISER), the National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB), the Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology and the University of Ibadan.

Gender perspectives in agricultural research

The anchor, Adeola Alabi, Gender Research Associate at PROSSIVA, started by stressing the importance of considering gender in agricultural research and highlighted the key purpose of the workshop. “We have decided to reach out more actively to the NARES to introduce and discuss the integrative gender and youth-focused methodologies that we use or have developed in IITA or within the wider CGIAR,” he said.

IITA Social Scientist Béla Teeken provided an overview of gender research implemented within IITA. He highlighted the transformative impact of gender considerations in agricultural research, saying, “To achieve social impact in communities, gender, and social inclusion is crucial.” Teeken outlined the gender team’s core focus areas, including integrating gender perspectives into bio-physical research and its innovations, addressing gender social norms within agricultural value chains, and developing gender-responsive breeding tools in particular because genetic innovation is a key area and strength of IITA.

Gender-inclusive breeding

He continued with the Cassava Breeding Senior Research Supervisor, Bello Abolore, sharing approaches to integrate gender into breeding practices. Drawing on experiences, they explained how this helps breeders to prioritize traits and select varieties that reflect end-users’ preferences and thus create social impact, a key objective of public breeding. The team’s participatory approaches include an integrated approach investigating the performance of new clones within the different social spaces along the cassava value chain:

1. Tricot on-farm variety evaluations with a socially inclusive selection of participants based on locally relevant social groups and
2. The democratic identification of lead farmers, mostly women, in different locations. These women process evaluation with champion processors of roots and tuber crops, process diagnostics to look into varietal influence on drudgery within processing work, and test market auctions and food science consumer testing.

Tools for measuring gender norms

Senior Gender and Social Inclusion Associate Olamide Nwanze introduced a guide for developing quantitative tools to measure gender norms in agrifood systems developed by the CGIAR Gender Equality (HER+) Initiative research team, which includes members from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), IITA, and the American NGO FHI 360. She highlighted how these tools empower researchers and practitioners to address gender norms as root causes of inequalities and disempowerment within crop and livestock agricultural value chains.

Gendered seed systems and youth empowerment

Adeola Alabi presented key gender concepts in seed system outcomes: availability, affordability, accessibility, and acceptability. He clarified how gendered seed systems globally impact food, nutrition, and livelihood security.  In conclusion, Alabi emphasized the need for gender-sensitive policies that address agriculture’s gender-based challenges.

John Obaniyi, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the IITA Youth Agripreneurs (IYA) platform, shared insights on positioning youth and women as technology brokers. He detailed how continuous mentorship and training empower young men and women to embrace agriculture and integrate technology into agribusiness.

Participant engagement

The workshop featured discussions on gender-responsive participatory tools like the G+ tools for gender-inclusive customer and product profiling in breeding and the relevance of pairwise ranking to access tacit knowledge of men and women and prioritize user preferences. Some participants noted the absence of the traditional gender analysis comparing men’s and women’s preferences for traits, constraints, and opportunities. However, the team clarified the importance of identifying gender-specific tasks within value chain roles and focusing on these groups rather than broadly comparing men and women as two homogeneous categories. Furthermore, participants learned to categorize gender norms as either descriptive (referring to individuals’ beliefs about what other people do) or injunctive (individuals’ beliefs about others’ approval or disapproval of others’ behavior, practices, or tasks) and develop actionable indicators, tailoring methodologies to their unique contexts and stakeholders within these.

One participant suggested that since IITA already has the ‘Start-Them-Early’ program in place under the IYA platform, the institute should focus on introducing agriculture into secondary schools in Ibadan to safeguard future generations from hunger. Another participant highlighted the potential for young entrepreneurs to collaborate and use agricultural content creation to attract more youth into the agricultural sector, reducing unemployment and increasing food security.

Another participant emphasized the importance of inclusivity in the youth program, stating, “While helping women, let’s not forget the men; while supporting the youth, let’s consider the broader (mentoring) community; and while aiding graduates, let’s also address the needs of those who are illiterate.” While speaking on the need to collaborate with the government and other private institutions for the youth interventions to have more reach, another contributor added, “Your presentation shows that IYA has made remarkable innovations, especially the wine made from orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. It is crucial to ensure these inventions get to the market for easier access to the wider audience to complete the success story.”

Breakout and panel sessions provided opportunities for participants to brainstorm how to integrate gender perspectives into the crop, livestock, forestry, extension, and other research areas. Representatives from NIHORT, the University of Ibadan, and other institutions shared their experiences, highlighting challenges and successes in implementing GYSI methodologies. Participants concluded that more cooperation between the CGIAR institutes, such as IITA and NARES researchers and staff, should be established for mutual learning, including co-authoring publications. The CGIAR can learn much from the NARES experience in local contexts, and therefore, IITA should work more with NARES staff in a more symmetrical manner, especially as one of the main mandates of the CGIAR and thus also IITA is to learn from the NARES and strengthen their and its capacity. A large opportunity lies in creating efficient win-win cooperation that reduces overall project costs and increases impact.

Participants’ feedback

Participants commended the workshop for providing actionable tools and methodologies. They requested more success stories and examples of implementing Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs) that address the underlying causes of gender inequality and called for the inclusion of representatives from key ministries such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development to align future workshops with policy initiatives.

Next steps and future plans

The GYSI team shared plans to scale up the initiative, involving a broader range of stakeholders and potentially extending the workshop duration. A comprehensive handbook showcasing GYSI tools, methodologies, and success stories is currently being developed.

This workshop begins a series of efforts to create a more inclusive and equitable agricultural research landscape in Nigeria. As the GYSI team continues its work, collaborations with national institutions across sectors have great potential to amplify the impact of GYSI-focused research for a more inclusive and equitable future in agrifood systems.