A renewed organisation for a dynamic continent

With the pandemic raging in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and quarantines and travel restrictions shutting down trade, vast swathes of farmland lay bare, vulnerable to pests and wild animals. Food production had paused, and markets were closed. Farmers resorted to eating their rice seed while traditional festivities were cancelled. This was not the impact of Covid-19, but Ebola, back in 2014. I was then the Executive Director of the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD). I vividly remember the moment we realised not only was there a threat from Ebola but also a crisis for farmers’ very way of life. They had literally lost their seed capital.

Fortunately, we rapidly leveraged our existing network of partnerships to address this, bringing together regional blocs such as the Economic Community of West Africa States, sub-regional research organisations such as CORAF/WECARD, government institutions, communities, farmers, and other research institutions on a special, ad-hoc innovation platform to produce and deliver seeds to farmers. In the end, that really saved the day. Thanks to the mobilisation of this vast partnership, the post-Ebola period was not as difficult as people had predicted. These partnerships didn’t emerge spontaneously in the heat of a crisis. They were built on years of hard work, trust, and cooperation. They required innovative structures that reached down to the grassroots level. Fast-forward eight years and another pandemic is playing out, posing an even greater threat to food security through its sheer scale, and once again, these partnerships will be called upon and tested.

For 50 years, the world’s largest food science organisation, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has been responding to the challenges of the developing world together with partners. And as these challenges and partnerships evolve, so too is CGIAR undergoing a transformative change. As CGIAR’s new Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, I hope to bring that same emphasis on ground-level partnerships we used during the Ebola crisis to the way in which CGIAR works across Africa in the future. A reformed ‘One’ CGIAR recognises the complex interdependence of today’s most compelling problems, whether hunger and poverty or climate change and biodiversity loss. The new consensus recognises that we need to tackle these problems holistically, efficiently, and effectively, bringing all CGIAR’s partnerships, knowledge, assets, and global presence to bear in a systematic way.

Central to that transformation is the way CGIAR sees and values Africa. In this reconfiguration, not just Africa but Africans themselves are central to the realisation of CGIAR’s mission to achieve a transformative change of food, land, and water systems. Three of CGIAR’s six priority regions will be within Africa. This means that 50 per cent of our regional leadership is African, effectively increasing Africa’s representation and voice within CGIAR’s global leadership. There is good reason for this focus. With nearly 1.4 billion people today, Africa’s population is projected to grow to 4.2 billion by the end of the century. Thus, Africa’s destiny is a huge part of the world’s future.

But the challenges confronting the continent are as striking as its growth. Climate change may hit the African continent harder than any other, with the rate of temperature increase across the continent projected to exceed the global average. Meanwhile, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remains poorly understood. Counting 18 of the world’s 20 poorest countries—and six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies—the continent and its prospects defy easy characterisation. This complex mosaic presents a unique set of challenges. CGIAR has been working hard to strengthen its alliances with African institutions that will help us turn research into concrete impacts in regions and countries.

This has included a global coalition of development organisations dedicated to introducing sustainable agricultural practices to countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, such as the Ukama Ustawi initiative, which aims to diversify and bolster maize farming in the face of climate shocks. The Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project is also playing a vital role in strengthening the agriculture research architecture in Africa, addressing the increasingly frequent and severe droughts in the Sahel and the shorter, more unpredictable growing seasons across East and Southern Africa. And the Index-Based Livestock Insurance program (IBLI) protects livestock keepers in drought-prone arid and semi-arid lands in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel from climate-related losses by giving them the resources they need to help their animals survive periods of sustained crises.

And several of the new CGIAR research initiatives have recently held strategic planning sessions with stakeholders from dozens of countries and regions in, from Benin to Vietnam. One of the new initiatives, for example, held more than 50 listening sessions and engaged almost 1500 stakeholders since the start of 2022. With a unified governance structure, CGIAR last year consolidated its dispersed and disparate centers into one unified whole. However, this year, the focus is restructuring the organisation to work more effectively with our partners at the local to the global levels. There is still a way to go—no institution is perfect—but we invite internal and external feedback and look forward to working with our African partners and beyond to realise this new agenda.

Roy-Macauley is Regional Director, East and Southern Africa, CGIAR, and Director General of the Africa Rice Center.