Jummai O. Yila

Jummai Yila is an experienced gender and development professional with a diverse skillset and global reach. She is a Senior Scientist - Gender and Social Research and serves as the Country Representative for Uganda and Research Leader of the Gender and Livelihoods Unit. With over 18 years of experience, Jummai's expertise spans gender integration in agricultural program design, natural resource management, research design, and resource mobilization on gender-related issues. Her work focuses on youth and women's empowerment, gender transformation, food and nutrition security, agricultural productivity, and improving the socioeconomic resilience of the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach farmers. 

Jummai was the co-lead of Seed Equal’s Work Package 6, “Scaling equitable access to quality seed” and responsible for leading the design and implementation of formative and action research on inclusive seed systems with a focus on gender and social inclusion in agri-food systems, as well scaling equitable access to quality seed through gender transformative intervention approaches. 

Prior to her current roles, Jummai was a Senior Scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, where she served as the global Lead of the Gender and Youth Cluster.