Alumni Lecture: Batamaka Somé, ""Pillars of Resilience: Rural Women’s Leadership and Farmer-Centered Research for Food System Transformation in the West African Sahel"

International Year of the Woman Farmer Series hosted by the Center for the Study of Global Gender Equity and the College of ACES Office of International Programs welcomes Illinois Alumnus Batamaka Somé, PhD in Anthropology with a Graduate Minor in Gender Relations and International Development will give a talk titled "Pillars of Resilience: Rural Women’s Leadership and Farmer-Centered Research for Food System Transformation in the West African Sahel".  The December 8th talk will take place at 4:00pm in 210 Levis Faculty Center and via Zoom

Conventional agricultural research has too often positioned farmers as recipients and adopters of technologies developed elsewhere, rather than as active partners in generating knowledge and shaping innovation. At the same time, persistent gender inequalities and patriarchal structures have constrained women’s voice and decision-making power in households, communities, and agricultural systems—despite the central roles rural women play in farming and across food systems. In this lecture, I draw on experiences from the West African Sahel to demonstrate the empowering potential of research grounded in farmers’ realities, priorities, and knowledge. More importantly, I showcase how rural women are leveraging farmer-centred research, alongside their own transformative leadership, to strengthen resilience and drive food system transformation. Against a backdrop of insecurity, climate variability, and geopolitical volatility, these experiences reveal rural women not simply as beneficiaries of agricultural development, but as agents of innovation, leaders of change, and essential pillars of resilient food systems in the Sahel.