The CGIAR needs a revolution

Abstract

The CGIAR is a unique scientific organization that seeks to improve food security for low-income people. It should be leading efforts to generate sustainable productivity gains in agriculture, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where productivity lags. However, its current ill-adapted priorities and structure, its obsession with re-organizations, and its unproductive ventures into local development projects have reduced its impact and rendered it unable to respond to the challenge of food security under climate change. The system's efforts have become too diffuse and ineffective while attempts to revive impact through repeated re-organizations have failed. The CGIAR has unique strengths: access to plant germplasm, know-how to improve germplasm and agronomic practices, global networks of experimental sites and research collaborators, and excellent staff. The CGIAR's scientists are highly motivated, but leaders and funders of the system have failed to support them with a simple, focused, and better funded operational environment needed to succeed in their research – and have greater impact from it. This can be corrected. We propose a scientific and problem-driven focus on fewer global and regional research priorities, supported by adequate long-term funding, rigorous methods of project evaluation, and management that stimulates innovation and seeks verifiable results. These supports do not exist today and we do not see that the current One CGIAR system will provide them in the foreseeable future.