Scaling CGIAR innovation in Africa: Forging new collaborations for greater impact beyond COP28

CGIAR is the world’s largest publicly funded research partnership for agriculture and food security and has played a critical role in global agricultural development for more than five decades.

Thanks to innovations developed by CGIAR scientists and researchers, we have seen improved livelihoods for millions of smallholder farmers, with more robust food security for many communities in developing countries.

An external assessment of CGIAR found in 2020 that there had been a 10-dollar return on every dollar invested in CGIAR research and development over the past 50 years.

But over time, and as the world faces ever more complex challenges like climate change, the incremental gains from such innovation naturally become harder to maintain, especially in challenging contexts across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Driving innovation is not enough. If the CGIAR wants to achieve its goal of transforming food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis, then more must be done to deliver its innovations on the scale needed to meet the challenges of today and the future.