Clearinghouse connects CGIAR to AfDB investments
Now formally moved into CGIAR through Scaling for Impact, the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) Clearinghouse is linking US$1.5 billion in African Development Bank-backed investment to science-backed innovations in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The TAAT Clearinghouse, created under the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, connects innovations with development financing and delivery systems. More than a catalog, it is a brokerage mechanism that validates technologies, organizes them in an e-catalog, and links them to large-scale investments. It is now being transferred to CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact (S4I) Program, where the Clearinghouse is helping embed CGIAR innovations in projects under a US$1.5-billion portfolio of IFI-financed national investments in 2026.
The rationale for this transition is simple. CGIAR produces innovations but has often lacked a mechanism to connect them to the investment programs through which agricultural transformation happens. The TAAT Clearinghouse helps close that gap. It bundles innovations into investment-ready packages, provides technical assistance to governments and IFIs, and brokers the partnerships needed to embed CGIAR science inside national delivery systems. With support from a Gates Foundation investment, TAAT is becoming the first of several planned clearinghouses linking CGIAR to major financing bodies. Through this model, CGIAR innovations deployed via IFI-financed projects are expected to reach 3.4 million farmers in 2026.
In 2025, that model reached a turning point. Announced at the African Food Systems Forum, CGIAR and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), TAAT’s leading CGIAR Center, initiated a process to integrate the Clearinghouse into S4I. The Clearinghouse had helped drive CGIAR scaling across 34 African countries, and integration would allow it to operate as a CGIAR-wide service through pooled funding and donor partnerships. In December 2025, TAAT convened a transition workshop in Benin to align priorities, governance, and collaboration for its next phase.
The results behind that transition are significant. Since its launch in 2018, TAAT has reached more than 25 million farmers with technologies across Africa. In Nigeria, heat-tolerant wheat varieties developed by ICARDA and CIMMYT were integrated into an AfDB-financed National Agriculture Growth Scheme/Agropocket program through the Clearinghouse, backed by US$134 million in scaling investments informed by TAAT. Within two years, wheat area expanded from about 70,000 hectares in 2022/23 to 277,577 hectares in 2024/25. In Ethiopia, heat-tolerant wheat varieties deployed with the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research helped open lowland areas once considered unsuitable for wheat. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rapid multiplication technologies for virus-free cassava planting material developed by IITA were promoted through TAAT to stimulate private investment and the growth of a new cassava industry.
The Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation Phase II (TAAT-II) Rice Compact shows how this model can turn science into investable scale. Led by the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), the Compact helped shape and support rice-sector projects linked to a combined sovereign investment envelope of about US$791.3 million across West and Central Africa. With seed money from CGIAR’s S4I Program, it applied the broader TAAT approach in rice: curating innovations, embedding technical expertise, and translating CGIAR rice science into implementation-ready packages for governments and financing partners. Across eight country contexts, the approach supported projects targeting 373,000 jobs, at least 21,592 hectares of irrigated or water-controlled land, 250 cooperatives, 62,200 tons of certified seed, and rice-yield gains from 2.53 to 4.22 tons per hectare where targets were specified.
These are not isolated technical successes. They show the value of a system that brings together technology, partnerships, large-scale investment, and supportive policy environments. With AfDB support under TAAT Phase III, including US$16 million for transition and scale-up, the ambition is to expand this model under S4I to reach 40 million farmers over the next three years. CGIAR is taking stewardship of a model designed to turn evidence into investable opportunities and science into transformation at scale.
