The Role of Cgiar in Agricultural Research for Development in Africa South of the Sahara

Despite the impressive growth of African agriculture in the past two decades, the pressing need to accelerate agricultural productivity growth is widely recognized. Much of the solution to achieving sustainable food security and nutrition depends on improving production in Africa, without increasing the environmental footprint of agriculture (Chapter 1, this volume). The food gap in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA), currently met through imports, provides a significant potential market for mostly poor and hungry smallholder farmers to expand their output and improve their livelihoods. For this potential to materialize in a situation of increasingly interconnected international markets and in the presence of subsidies in various Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, farming in the region must become more market oriented and competitive. Improvements in agricultural productivity must come from a farm sector that is rapidly expanding onto more marginal land, with a natural resource base that is often degrading or facing competition from other sectors, and within the context of the adverse impacts of climate change. Moreover, this improved productivity must be achieved, in large part, by farm families operating on less than two hectares of land and with extremely modest physical and human capital. Turning this situation around constitutes an agenda of transformation that depends on improvements in many dimensions of the agricultural and rural sectors, as has been discussed throughout this volume. A large range of actors are involved in efforts to take advantage of opportunities, achieve major agricultural changes, and create new system-level conditions beyond those of the field or farm. CGIAR has also been evolving over time. Its scientists, for example, used to be held primarily accountable for producing global public goods as measured by publications in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals. Today—although publications continue to be an important indicator of quality—CGIAR scientists are also required to demonstrate how their results