Adversity as opportunity
Complexity and diversity as new
frontiers in development research
Carlos Sere, ILRI

Main propositions
• The ‘big’ challenges we face today are not
‘simple’, they arise out of dynamic
complexity
• To address them we will require new
approaches:
– Programmatically
– Organisationally

Complex challenges
• Often have many causes, interacting in
complex and conditional ways;
• Causes and consequences are often
scale-dependent, or operate across
scales;
• Sometimes have their roots in differences
in human value systems.

Towards an understanding of the
programmatic challenge

Food crisis and agriculture

The growth in crop yield gains has slowed, while food demand
continues to rise rapidly
Growth in Crop Yield Gains Developing Country Consumption
Source: World Development Report, 2008

Stubborn maize yields
10 Burundi
Comoros
9
DRC
8 Djibouti
Egypt
Maiza Yield (Tonne/Ha)
7
Eritrea
6 Ethiopia
Kenya
5
Libya
4 Madagascar
Malawi
3 Mauritius
2 Rwanda
Seychelles
1 Sudan
0 Swaziland
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Uganda
Zambia
Year
Zimbabwe

Global crisis,
regional exceptions
FAO global food
160 price index
150 Ethiopia
140
Food Price
Kenya
130
120 Tanzania
110
Uganda
100
90 Madagascar
80
Malawi
70
Mar- Jun- Sep- Dec- Mar- Rwanda
07 07 07 07 08
Source: FAO, 2008; country statistics offices, cited in Karugia et al 2008

Regional response to food price crisis
• Protect the vulnerable
• Exploit regional diversity and facilitate
regional trade
• Enhance supply response
• Strengthen and use regional institutions for
preparedness and response

Reducing vulnerability, risk,
building assets
• Vulnerability not only damages people’s welfare,
it also reduces growth directly by destroying
assets … (Dorward et al 2008)
• Need to assist poor people in the agricultural
sector by reducing:
– The risk and vulnerability to shocks and stresses, and
– the perceptions of high risk in the sector, which may
otherwise prevent the poor from venturing into new
opportunities.

New organizational approaches to
addressing complex challenges

East African Dairy Development

Overall Goal
• To transform the lives of 179,000 families—or approximately
one million people —by doubling household dairy income by
year 10 through integrated interventions in dairy production,
market-access and knowledge application
• Beneficiaries:
– 169,000 poor smallholder dairy families that earn less than $2 per
adult equivalent per day and have 1-5 cows
– 10,000 Fodder producers that earn less than $ 2 per adult per day
• US$ 48 million investment

Three major objectives
• To generate information for evidence based
decision-making on the dairy value chain and to
develop innovative solutions for use of resources
that increase income
• To expand dairy markets and increase market
access for smallholder farmers
• To increase dairy productivity and efficiency in a
sustainable manner

Confronting Complexity
• Challenges
– Business model
– Conflicting objectives and trade-offs
• Opportunities
– The hub concept
– Multi-country project

EADD project model:
Dairy Hubs

Dairy Sector Value Chain
Farmer
ILRI
Heifer
ABS
ICRAF
Techno Serve
Heifer
ILRI
Techno Serve
Techno Serve
Techno Serve
ILRI
Consumer

However…
• Policy research on African agriculture is
progressively long on prescriptions for
– what needs to be done to spur agricultural growth but
short on
– how such prescriptions might be implemented in
practice (Omamo, 2003).
• The issue is how to promote
– “evidence-readiness” among inherently conservative
and pragmatic policy makers and practitioners and
– “user-readiness” among inherently abstraction-
oriented researchers (Omamo 2004).

CGIAR Reform

CGIAR has evolved to a System with more than 8,500 CGIAR
scientists and staff working in over 100 countries, addressing
every critical component of the agricultural research sector
IFPRI ICARDA
Washington, DC Aleppo, Syria ICRISAT
USA Patancheru
India
IRRI
Los Baños
Philippines
Bioversity
International
Rome,Italy
WorldFish
Penang
IITA
Malaysia
Ibadan
CIMMYT
Nigeria
Mexico City
Mexico
IWMI
ILRI
Colombo
Nairobi
Sri Lanka CIFOR
Kenya
CIP Bogor
Lima, Peru CIAT Indonesia
Cali
Colombia
Africa Rice Center-WARDA
Cotonou, Benin

Since its launch, CGIAR has delivered innovations that
have resulted in feeding an additional 13 million people
per year
Without the CGIAR’s investment:
– World food production would be 4 to 5 percent lower
– Developing countries would produce 7 to 8 percent less food
– 13 to 15 million more children would be malnourished

CGIAR launched a change initiative at the
beginning of 2008 in service of greater impact
FROM TO
 Clear vision with focused priorities that respond to
 Mission creep and trying to do everything
global development challenges
 Duplicative mandate of the Centers without clear  Centers that collaborate, work toward the System
System-wide vision and strategy for impact agenda and priorities, and deliver impact
 Complex and cumbersome governance and lack of  Streamlined and effective System-level governance
accountability with clear accountability
 Static partnerships that are not enabling scalable  Strong and innovative partnerships with NARS, the
impact and research adoption private sector and civil society that enable impact
 Lack of coordination among investors  Strengthened, coordinated funding mechanisms
that are linked to the System agenda and priorities
 Declining core resources  Stabilization and growth of resource support
Greater impact on food security and poverty reduction

With additional resources, existing capabilities could be
scaled up and out to provide even more impact on
emerging challenges
ILLUSTRATIVE
SOLUTIONS
 Drought-tolerant chickpea
 Combating deforestation, the
source of
20% of annual GHG
emissions
CGIAR Capabilities
Capabilities  Disease resistant potatoes
Currently  Drought-tolerant high-yielding rice
Leveraged
Untapped Against
 Drought-tolerant maize with 30%
higher yields
Capabilities Development  Flood-tolerant rice with yield 2-3
Challenges  Super-early chickpeas
 Pest resistant maize
 New Rice for Africa(NERICA)
- pests and disease resistant
- reduced import dependence
 Aquaculture techniques
double yields

Conclusions: networked science to
address complex challenges
Forward looking, opportunity oriented
– For researchers:
• All kinds of research can have impact
• Classical ideas of ‘critical mass’ less valid
• Must be networked, have ‘digital footprint’
– For research managers:
• Huge expectations of transformation of societies
• Need to engage much more in networked science
• Engage with postmodern approaches

Thank you!
c.sere@cgiar.org
www.ilri.org