Comments by Greg Traxler, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at the IFPRI Policy Seminar, "", April 7, 2011, Washington, DC

1. Comments by Greg Traxler ASTI seminar April 7, 2011
Let me start by congratulating Nienke and her team on this landmark contribution to our
understanding of African agricultural R&D. By all measures - coverage, detail, credibility,
accuracy - this measurement effort sets a new quality standard. For the first time we can say
that we have meaningful time series data on the agricultural R&D enterprise in SSA – a number
of important new issues have been brought to light and the potential to understand the
political economy of R&D in Africa has been greatly expanded. Even more exciting is that the
ASTI’s achievements that are highlighted today are one milestone along the way to finding
solutions to lagging agricultural productivity in Africa. I look for the December ASTI/FARA
conference to make a major analytical contribution. (I hope that the details of this conference
are provided to today’s attendees.) I also look forward to the next evolution of ASTI -regular
data rounds that can be used to monitor R&D investment levels on a biennial basis. I should
also pause to acknowledge the strong support and leadership that Shenggen and Mark have
provided to ASTI.
I do not want to get in the way of the Q&A discussion, but I was asked to take a couple of
minutes to make some observations. Let me start with a few of the striking challenges framed
by the ASTI data and then mention specific issues that ASTI puts on table for African
governments and their investment partners.
1. Let me first mention the small country challenge. The 32 countries represent
tremendous diversity in experience and prospects. About a third of the countries have
less than 100 agricultural researchers, some of those have only a couple of dozen PhD
trained researchers, about 2/3 of SSA countries have 200 or fewer researchers, about
the same number as a college of agriculture at a US land Grant University. It is a
tremendous challenge for these research systems to individually achieve scale,
particularly when we consider the number of environments, crops and farming systems
within each country. SSA achieved its highest annual investment growth rate ever
during the 2001-2008 period, and saw an increase of more than $300 m in annual
expenditures. Yet this increase leaves R&D investment intensity where it was in 1975
and still significantly below the CAADP target of 1% of ag GCP. Nearly all of the $300 m

2. increase is accounted for by just 5 countries. Even for those countries receiving
increased funding, the unpredictable manner in which these increases has occurred has
blunted their effective use – Nigeria for example has a lower share of scientists holding
a PhD today, than they did 10 years ago.
2. The problem of instability of R&D funding emerges quite clearly. Annual funding
variability is higher in SSA than in any region in the world. As Nienke and Phil Pardey
have pointed out, agricultural innovation is slow magic, requiring 20-30 years of
cumulative progress. It difficult to attract and retain top scientists and to keep their
research program on track if you can’t predict next years’ budget. We see the evidence
that donors have been part of the problem in the past. I don’t like the term donor
dependency and I hope that we will soon enter an era where that term is obsolete. We
need to make better use of traditional funding modalities and explore innovative
approaches to supporting R&D. The CGIAR Fund Council is meeting this week. Our
approach to funding NARSs is in just as serious need of reform.
3. The human capital deficit. India and SSA have about the same total number of
agricultural researchers (India has about 8% more), but India has two and a half times as
many PhD researchers as SSA. That is a gap of more than 5,000 researchers to be
trained, and over the past decade this quality gap has widened. The share of researchers
with PhD training has not increased since 2000. The magnitude of this opportunity is
increased by the evidence of the increasing average age of African scientists. As most of
us in this room know first hand, graduate scientific training is a slow and expensive
process. Africa’s needs are urgent and donors can be an important part of training this
generation of African scientists, just as they have been in past decades in Asia and Latin
America.
4. None of these are new problems. What is new is that the new ASTI data bring these
problems to light with a clarity that has been lacking up to now. We know which
countries are struggling, which are doing relatively well. We can measure the magnitude
of the funding variability problem, we can measure the size of the human capital deficit
and calculate the cost of bringing SSA human capital up to international standards.

3. The other thing that is new is that the institutional structure is much richer than in past
decades. The maturation of supranational organizations such as FARA, ASARECA, CORAF
and CARDESSA present new opportunities for addressing the funding stability, and
perhaps the small country problem as well. We have an evolving CAADP framework.
CAADP presents a new world of opportunity for improving the partnership between
donors and governments. CAADP targets and aims are clear. Six percent growth of
agricultural GDP. This implies a productivity growth rate of at least 3.5%. This can be
achieved only through a seismic shift in our dedication to agricultural R&D. There is no
other means to achieve the CAADP growth targets. We can all be part of that effort, but
we must become more serious and sophisticated in how we approach the organization
and funding of R&D. The SSA African agricultural R&D enterprise today is dominated by
small, underfunded institutions staffed by undertrained staff. This is not the way to
transform agriculture in Africa.
I thank IFPRI and ASTI for bringing this important task to light. I urge everyone here to,
and I thank you for the opportunity to offer my thoughts today.