Designed for someone else, better interventions start with one question: who is the farmer?

The article follows the collaboration between Julie Newton, gender researcher and advisor at KIT Institute in the Netherlands, and Rashida Chantima Ziblila, gender specialist at IITA within CGIAR’s Sustainable Farming program in Ghana. 

Through the NWO-funded Senior Expert Programme in the NL-CGIAR research programme, their collaboration focuses on strengthening gender equity and social inclusion within agricultural innovation, helping research teams ask not only whether an intervention reaches farmers, but who benefits, who decides and whose realities are still being overlooked.

Their work shows why inclusion must go beyond participation. Women, young farmers, older people, landless farmers, indigenous groups, people with limited market access and other marginalised groups may all be present in the same agricultural systems, but face very different barriers. If those differences are not understood from the start, even well-intended interventions can miss the people they were designed to support, or unintentionally reinforce existing inequalities.

From rethinking assumptions in programme design to supporting CGIAR teams in asking questions about power, access and benefit, this story illustrates what the Senior Expert Programme is designed to do: connect Dutch expertise with CGIAR’s locally embedded work, strengthen international research collaboration and help ensure that science leads to real-world impact.

We would like to thank journalist Jasmijn Snoijink for capturing this story with depth and care, and Julie Newton and Rashida Chantima Ziblila for generously sharing their time, expertise and reflections in the interview. We also gratefully acknowledge the collaborative efforts of CGIAR and NWO, whose partnership and commitment have helped make this series possible. We are also thankful for the additional support of Nienke Beintema (WUR), Timmo Gaasbeek (BZ), and Vera Musch (LVVN) in the process.