1. Number of rural poor people: We selected geographies with the highest absolute number of poor people living in rural high-density areas. The seven selected African countries account for half of the urban and rural poor in Sub- Saharan Africa.
2. Potential for productivity improvement: We invest in areas of high and growing demand for staple-food and high- productivity potential and where cross-national spillover benefits between agroecologies can be maximized.
3. Probability of success: We estimated the likelihood of success in terms of an enabling political and economic environment as well as the potential to expand on our existing partnerships.
Integration across the commodity value chain
Traditionally, the concept of a value chain is meant to trace all components and processes involved in the movement of a commodity from the farm to the consumer’s plate. Our more expansive view considers the entire chain from “molecule to mouth.” Our definition of an integrated value chain is inclusive of the R&D associated with commodity improvement, all processes and components involved in technology transfer and dissemination, access to inputs, farm production and management, postharvest operations, access to markets, and the links to the food retail sector. The integrated value chain approach helps us prioritize
and integrate our work externally as well as internally. Strong internal teams around each of the value chains allow us to take a comprehensive approach to priority interventions and grant design. In each anchor geography, these teams look across the value chain to identify constraints and opportunities. For example, our investment in stress-tolerant varieties of rice for Africa and South Asia has resulted in several new varieties for flood and drought tolerance. But weak seed policies in Sub-Saharan Africa constrain the rapid movement of these varieties from experiment stations to farmers’ fields. Complementary investments in an enabling seed policy environment at the national and regional levels improves farmer access to seed and enables more rapid productivity growth.
Effective partnerships for reaching scale
We recognize that our ability to scale up our efforts depends on aligning with and leveraging the skills, capacity, and resources of a wide set of partners in the region. While at the global level, we partner with a broad range of public and private partners to boost the pace of and ensure the relevance of our international R&D and policy agendas, one reason for deepening our engagement in a
limited number of anchor geographies is to leverage partnerships that can heighten our impact on the ground. Creating effective “hand-off” from global public good R&D to
technology dissemination at the national and local levels requires identifying and strengthening partnerships with all players along the commodity value chain. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a critical partner in building the bridge from global innovation to local adoption. The AGRA Program on African Seed Systems (PASS) has already released and disseminated more than 150 new and improved varieties of the major staple crops across Sub-Saharan Africa. PASS has shown the crucial importance of working with the local private sector, including small agro-dealers, in order to have impact on a large scale. Our work in Ethiopia provides an early example of the way we
can achieve widespread impact through improved coordination. Working with the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), we are helping the Government of Ethiopia design and implement a long-term strategy for agricultural development through smallholder productivity growth. The ATA has been instrumental in bringing about improved coordination not just among the national agencies involved in agricultural development but also across the multitude of bilateral and multilateral agencies supporting Ethiopia’s development. Nevertheless, our ability to partner with institutions at
the national and local levels is constrained by poor capacity at the technical, policy, and management levels. The few strong organizations that exist tend to be overwhelmed by donor requests to rapidly scale up programs. Broad-based capacity building efforts, though crucial, are beyond the scope of a single donor and require sustained commitment from a larger coalition of bilateral and multilateral funders. Developing countries themselves need to make a strong commitment to building broad-based capacity at all levels. Finally, effective monitoring-and-evaluation and impact-
assessment systems are needed to monitor progress toward our sustainable-productivity targets and poverty-reduction goals. Our investments in household data and other “real-time” M&E systems, including environmental monitoring, help us track progress.
For further reading: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Agricultural Development Strategy Overview, http://www.
gatesfoundation.org/agriculturaldevelopment/Documents/ agricultural-development-strategy-overview.pdf; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Agricultural Development Grant Overview,
www.gatesfoundation.org/agriculturaldevelopment/Documents/ agricultural-development-grant-overview.pdf.
Prabhu Pingali (
Prabhu.Pingali@gatesfoundation.org) is deputy director of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle Washington.
www.ifpri.org
Copyright © 2012 International Food Policy Research Institute. All rights reserved. Contact
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