Gender-Responsive Crop Improvement: From Great Training to Evidence from the Field

Dear Colleagues,

The Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation project (GREAT) is a novel collaboration between Makerere University in Uganda and Cornell University in the United States centered around providing interdisciplinary gender training to agricultural researchers, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning in 2015 with a five-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GREAT has to-date trained over 280 researchers from 51 institutions and 26 countries, and the first phase ended in April 2022.

The GREAT approach to gender-responsive agricultural research training differs substantially from previous training models, notably in the emphasis on interdisciplinarity, the length of the courses, and the combined focus on personal reflection, theory, and methods. A prior published issue detailed the key learnings from the first phase, covering the project process, e.g., pedagogy and model design, participant engagement and mentoring, training team composition and competencies, community of practice, and fellow engagement. This issue presents a collection of results-oriented publications from GREAT fellows and mentors across all training cohorts.

Dr. Josephine Ahikire
Dr. Deborah Rubin
Guest Editors

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