Stephen Hall, WorldFish DG and incoming Alliance Chair, sums up Change Initiative discussions from AGM08 and looks to the year ahead:
Filed under: CGIAR AGM08, CGIAR Change Management
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First I must inform the blog manager that it is very hard to find the hiddedn button labelled ‘No comment’ and assume it is the way to submit our comments to this important blogging facility. Please improve this! And now my substantive contribution.
Intuitively, there are lots of benefits that can accrue from a unified and streamlined CGIAR system. I fully understand the challenges of changing that intuition into facts and figures that can be demonstrated for the global public to see. Thus we have to move on with a bit of faith. And I do have the faih that we will succeed.
My most important concern is for the scientists out there in the trenches. They are doing a good job now, and want to do a better job in the new system. So far, they spend close to 50% of their time (sometimes even more!) mobilizing resources, accounting for them and reporting to their centres and the CGIAR system. Can we concretely demonstrate that these scientists will in the new system spend a much less percentage of their time in these functions? What exactly will have happened at the centres and consortium levels to mediate the change?
Yet another initiative on change in the CGIAR. It is most welcome.
My concern is about Africa. The CGIAR spends perhaps 50% of its resources on Africa but its impact on African Agriculture has been little – certainly not spectacular. The problem is the disconnect between technology and markets. Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa simply don’t work because African Agricultulture is still predominantly subsitence. I believe it is important to find out what it is that makes markets work or don’t work. It is also important whether or not the CGIAR has a role in making markets in Africa work.
JK Mukiibi, Kampala, Uganda.
A few years ago CGIAR centers were hubs of good science. The work done in western Kenya, west Africa, southern Africa and Asia attest this. International scientists from CGIAR would effectively backstop NARS project. Interestingly as it may sound the lists of publications and flow of scientists from CGIAR to NARS show that the potential and attractiveness of CGIAR is diminishing pretty fast. In efforts to scout for money CGIAR scientists continue to sink in terms of science, loose their trained personel and therefore data coherence.