The World Bank sponsors an opportunity for the Challenge Programs to present their agendas and achievements in Washington

The World Bank invited the four Challenge Programs of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to introduce their programs to staff of the World Bank, US Agency for International Development, and US Department of Agriculture at an afternoon session on 24 March 2006. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz participated in the event, reconfirming his and the World Bank’s deep commitment to international agricultural research.

The Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Program (SSA-CP), the newest of the four, was represented by Coordinator Freddie Kwesiga. The SSA-CP was launched on the principle that the key to improving African agriculture lies in transforming how agricultural research and development is carried out in a way that addresses the complexity and heterogeneity of SSA farming systems. To this end, the Program is introducing an integrated approach to unraveling how natural resource management, production systems, agricultural markets and policies interact. The approach entails institutional changes that promote the involvement of all stakeholders in a system of innovation. SSA-CP conducts research at three pilot learning sites: Lake Kivu in East-Central Africa, the Kano-Katsina-Maradi transect in West Africa, and a transect that runs from northern Zimbabwe through central Mozambique and into southern Malawi.

The Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), represented by Coordinator Jonathan Woolley, focuses on poverty alleviation through improved agricultural water productivity. CPWF concentrates on five thematic areas:

• improving crop water productivity,
• water and people in catchments,
• aquatic ecosystems and fisheries,
• integrated basin water management systems, and
• global and national water and food systems.

To strategically tackle water productivity issues, CPWF focuses its research on nine river basins in Africa (the Limpopo, Nile and Volta), Asia (the Indo-Gangetic, Karkheh, Mekong and Yellow) and Latin America (the Andean system and Sao Francisco).

HarvestPlus, represented by Communications Coordinator Bonnie McClafferty and Impact and Policy Coordinator J.V. Meenakshi, develops micronutrient-dense staple crops by applying the best traditional breeding practices and modern biotechnology, aiming to achieve provitamin A, iron and zinc concentrations with measurable benefits for human nutrition. HarvestPlus is organized in two phases, each phase focusing on a set of staple crops critical to the diets of the poor. Major progress has already been made in improving the micronutrient content of several crops.

The Generation Challenge Program, represented by Director Jean-Marcel Ribaut, is a research and capacity-building network that uses plant genetic diversity, advanced genomic science, and comparative biology to develop tools and technologies that enable plant breeders in the developing world to produce better crop varieties for poor farmers. Generation’s research priority is to improve the drought tolerance of the staple crops of the CGIAR. Capacity building plays a major role in Generation — through fellowships, training courses, and product delivery plans — to ensure that research institutions and breeding programs in the developing world can effectively use the new knowledge and tools produced.

This highly successful event built on many previous contacts among the four Challenge Programs, which the CGIAR, together with many of its partners, established to create strong impacts in the short term. Challenge Programs adopt thematic and integrated approaches that involve a multitude of research, development, health, and delivery organizations, including other Challenge Programs.