The hard knocks of scaling: How we rise

On the second morning of CGIAR Scaling Week 2026, the room fell quiet. After a first day devoted to the art of the ask, Day 2 began with three people describing what happened when life did not give them the answer they had hoped for.

The session was called Rise. Namukolo Covic, Saleef Nyambok and Emma Naluyima spoke about interrupted plans, loss and difficult choices. Their stories gave the day a human starting point. Later, across the Open Spaces, participants explored what happens when promising innovations encounter obstacles of their own.

Namukolo, a public health nutritionist and head of CGIAR’s Liaison Office for Africa, grew up in poverty in Zambia. A fellowship took her to Canada for a master’s degree, but she put aside an opportunity to pursue a PhD and returned to Africa. Years later, while raising a family and working full-time, a friend asked why she could not pursue it now. She did.

Namukolo calls the years—the decades, even—between her degrees her “school of hard knocks”. Work across different fields taught her to speak with scientists from many disciplines and people at every level, from farmers to world leaders. The winding route became a strength: she learned to see “wicked opportunities” where others might see only “wicked problems”.

Saleef, ILRI’s social media officer, spoke about losing both his parents, finding support from family and rebuilding a path through university. Today he is a Princeton-in-Africa fellow, pursuing a master’s degree and hosting a podcast on men’s mental health. He reflected on how the gifts his parents gave him continue to shape the person he is becoming.

Emma Naluyima took a different kind of leap. At 26, she left a secure government veterinary job to farm a small piece of land in Uganda. Her family worried about the career and pension she had given up. Two decades of demanding work later, her integrated one-acre farm supports a thriving business and a farm-focused primary school with 400 pupils. She had wanted to show that a well-run farm could be profitable and sustainable. Doing it took patience, experimentation and a willingness to keep going when others doubted her choice.

These are three distinct stories, each belonging to the person who lived it. Together, they opened a question that ran through Day 2: what helps people and ideas continue when the original plan meets reality?

When good ideas meet the real world

In the Beyond the push Open Space, participants challenged the assumption that a successful pilot will naturally lead to wider adoption. An innovation may work during a grant-funded project yet struggle to survive when that support ends. The group asked whether organisations can carry it, who is ready to use it, and whether the surrounding system works. Business models, financing and regulation need testing alongside the technology, with intended users involved from the start.

The CGIAR Scaling for Impact solution tracks session brought similar lessons to life through a lively “Scaling Feud” game. Participants were urged to prove demand, not just need; examine financing as carefully as agronomy; keep the innovation bundle manageable; and identify the binding bottleneck instead of producing a bigger workplan. A demanding test of progress was whether a system could keep working after its original champions stepped back.

Finance was another recurring challenge. In Investable, not invisible, founders and funders explored why the right partner and the right capital depend on a venture’s stage. Grants can help an idea get started, but growth requires paying customers, clear evidence of impact and records that investors can examine. A promising innovation can stall when its financing, partnerships and timing do not fit together.

The EU Global Gateway discussion widened the frame further. Agricultural innovations must connect with investment in infrastructure and trade corridors, as well as government priorities for jobs and incomes. Participants considered how CGIAR’s science could contribute to proposals that businesses and investors can carry forward.

Other Open Spaces asked how change lasts. A session on evaluation urged participants to look beyond adoption numbers, bringing context and stakeholder perspectives into decisions about what to adapt. A coalition discussion asked whether networks include the actors they need, how those actors are connected and whether too much depends on any one organisation.

In a conversation on climate and nature finance, Kenyan farmer Wilkister Wayeeko described training farmers and distributing tree seedlings. “It’s tiresome work but we know the benefits of planting trees,” she said. Her experience grounded a wider discussion about incentives: farmers need to see benefits for their livelihoods, while partnerships with government and others can help local work reach further.

The Who will scale tomorrow? session turned attention to the next generation. Young people need more than encouragement or visibility. Access to education, practical experience, networks, capital and decision-making determines who has the chance to put an idea into practice.

Day 2 of CGIAR Scaling Week 2026 did not suggest that every obstacle can be overcome by trying harder. The stories on stage and the conversations across the Open Spaces pointed to a fuller understanding of resilience: listening when a plan falters, finding out what stands in the way, and bringing together the people and resources needed to move forward. That is how an idea — and sometimes a person — gets the chance to rise.