Researching commercial agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa with a gender perspective: Concepts, issues and methods, Future Agricultures Consortium Working Paper 132

This paper offers critical reflections on the concepts, issues and methods that are important for integrating agender perspective into mainstream research and policy-making on land and agricultural commercialisation inAfrica. It forms part of the Land and Agricultural Commercialisation in Africa (LACA) project undertaken by theFuture Agricultures Consortium between 2012 and 2015 and informs the case studies conducted across threecountries: Kenya, Ghana and Zambia. The paper compares key gender issues that arise across three different modelsof agricultural commercialisation: plantation, contract farming and small- and medium-scale commercial farming. It further discusses how concepts and research methods deriving from the literature on gender and agriculturemay be applied to mainstream research. The paper highlights the need for an integrated approach to researchinggender and agrarian change in Africa. In particular, the existing gender literature provides a rich legacy for researchers of all disciplines to inform their research design and analysis. The authors argue for a more systematic evaluationof the gender implications of agricultural commercialisation across interconnected social levels: household, localcommunity and the wider political economy.