CGIAR publishes an overview of its recent policy outcomes—how many, where, and what kind

Written by Oluchi Ezekannagha and Frank Place of the CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit

In today’s food polycrisis, understanding how to effect policy changes that support a transformed agriculture is more important than ever. We will not build a better food system without better food policies.

The big picture

CGIAR, a global agricultural research organization working to improve developing-country agrifood systems, has been making evidence-based policy-making a focus of its work for decades. However, while the substantial investments CGIAR has made in policy research are a matter of public record, with annual reporting of each specific outcome, what’s missing is the big picture of the outcomes and impacts this policy investment has affected. To fill that gap, the CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit has taken a data-driven look at CGIAR’s policy outcomes reported over five years, between 2017 and 2021, by a dozen CGIAR research programs (CRPs) and two CGIAR research platforms. This review of their reported policy outcomes offers an insightful overview of the number and kind of impacts CGIAR policy research has recently had. There are stories in these numbers—stories that matter. However, this assessment stayed focused on overall numbers.

Marshaling the data

To conduct this assessment, the authors, Oluchi Ezekannagha, a nutrition scientist and CGIAR program officer, and Frank Place, an economist and senior advisor for CGIAR and its International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), reviewed the 2017–2021 Outcome Impact Case Reports submitted by CGIAR’s CRPs and platforms to describe and synthesize the policy outcomes they influenced. Over these five years, 623 policy outcomes were reported (available online on CGIAR’s Results Dashboard). The authors categorized CGIAR’s policy outcomes by type, maturity level, impact area, and geographic region. They also mapped the outcomes to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) pathways and CGIAR’s five Impact Areas to evaluate their alignment with global food system transformation goals.

The stocktake

By far, most of these CGIAR 623 policy outcomes (75%) consisted of institutional policies or strategies outlining high-level implementation plans rather than budgets or investments for implementing a policy or strategy (13%) or legal instruments (laws and regulations) (6%). Most of the outcomes (61%) were at an initial uptake stage, where the research is taken up by the next user, rather than at an enactment stage (37%), where the policy or law is enacted or shows evidence of impact (2%).

• Most of the policy outcomes (54%) were cross-cutting, spanning two or more of CGIAR’s five Impact Areas; 16% focused on nutrition, health, and food security; 14% on poverty reduction, livelihoods, and jobs; 9% on climate change adaptation and mitigation; 4% on environmental health and biodiversity; and 3% on gender equality, youth, and social inclusion.
• Most of the outcomes (60%) were national in scope, with another 15% global, 10% regional, 8% subnational, and 7% multinational. The primary focus regions were East and Southern Africa (152 policy outcomes), South Asia (104 policy outcomes), and Southeast Asia and the Pacific (96 policy outcomes).
• The top countries targeted by CGIAR policy research were India (52 policy outcomes), Ethiopia (31), Kenya (30), and Viet Nam (28).
• Many policy outcomes supported multiple UNFSS pathways, demonstrating broad alignment with global goals for sustainable and equitable food systems.
• Most of the policy outcomes (63%) were oriented toward food producers rather than consumers or traders.
• Few of the policy outcomes focused on the UNFSS pathways to advance gender equality and social inclusion and to integrate humanitarian, development, and peace-building policies in conflict-affected areas.

Takeaways

These findings show that CGIAR’s policy research portfolio is well-aligned and supportive of major development interests and global food system transformation efforts. In the future, CGIAR’s policy agenda should consider expanding its geographic reach to be more comprehensive, balancing its concentration on food-producer policies (63%) with food consumer (25%) and trade policies (12%), making bigger investments in policies supporting gender equity, and, in addition to policy development, paying greater attention to policy implementation and achieving later-stage policy impacts, where policies and laws are enacted and demonstrate tangible impact.

The missing link

These results also beg some questions the authors do not attempt to answer here. Evaluating the impact of policy-oriented research on agricultural and rural development outcomes and welfare impacts remains a challenge, and relatively few studies have been undertaken. In 2021, CGIAR Advisory Services noted that there has been little synthesis of CGIAR contributions to policy change. In 2023, Agnes Kalibata, president of AGRA, remarked on the critical importance of up-to-date national agricultural policies in Africa—and the lack thereof: “We often find that policies to guide the uptake of agricultural inputs are outdated or entirely lacking. AGRA has worked to advance 72 input-related policies across 11 countries in the last five years.” This overview of CGIAR’s recent policy outcomes should set the stage for a separate exercise to identify high-priority policy outcome cases for further impact assessment.

Read the full report here:

CGIAR System Organization. 2024. Policy outcomes: An analysis of the 2017–2021 Outcome Impact Case Reports submitted by the CGIAR Research Programs—Overview and country insights. Montpellier, France: CGIAR System Organization.

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Header image: Dak Nong province, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. N. Palmer / CIAT