10.1. Introduction
10.2. Training
10.3. Information
10.4. Organization and Management Counselling
10.5. Relationships between CGIAR Centres and National Research Systems
The CGIAR was created as an international mechanism for funding technological research at specialized institutes (the centres), with the aim of transferring the products of that research to the developing countries. As the CGIAR System has evolved, however, the centres have devoted an increasing share of their efforts to strengthening national research systems. In so doing, they have fostered a multiplicity of relationships with these systems that contribute directly to research and, indirectly, to institution building.
CGIAR support for centre activities appears to be increasingly influenced by the policies of some of the System's donor members, who seem to believe that the CGIAR should be used as a mechanism for direct support to national research systems. More than a quarter of the System's resources are now allocated to institution building, while the other CGIAR activities also directly contribute to strengthening natural research capacity. The involvement of the CGIAR in strengthening national research systems has reached a ceiling. TAC's view is that the CGIAR should not be directly involved in technical assistance but focus on its complementary role through technology development and partnership. TAC stresses that, to maintain the momentum of its achievements, the CGIAR must not allow its support for a balanced approach to international research and institution building to become distorted by activities that are more appropriately undertaken by development agencies than by research institutes. The alternative could be to restructure the centres so that they are better equipped to fulfil a development role.
The centres have made a major contribution to strengthening national research capacity through training. Broadly defined, training receives high priority in CGIAR efforts and in 1990 accounted for more than 8% of total CGIAR resources. Table 10.1 provides information on the number of CGIAR trainees by type of training by region. During the past five years alone, more than 25,000 professionals have been trained through CGIAR efforts. More than a third of these came from sub-Saharan Africa. More than 80% of people trained were group trainees, while 8% received graduate training.
Training in the CGIAR serves two purposes: transferring technology from the centres to national research systems, and building national capacity to identify problems, conduct research, and develop and adapt technology. The System's contribution is enhanced by the intimate link it provides between training and technology development. Due to the heterogeneity in national capacities and needs, there is a wide spectrum in the types of training offered. Centres provide courses on the production and breeding of a broad range of commodities. In the more specialized courses, a broad range of disciplines and skills is encompassed, such as onfarm research methods, sophisticated techniques for strategic research, and the management of research programmes and institutions. The CGIAR System also provides degree-related and mid-career training for individuals. It considers these to be vital, both to the process of technology transfer and to the process of forging more fruitful collaboration between centres and national research systems, universities and other specialized institutions.
Table 10.1. Regional training in the CGIAR (1985-89)
|
Region |
Post Doc |
Ph.D. |
M.Sc. |
Visiting Scientists |
Group Trainees at HQ |
Group Trainees in Regions |
TOTAL |
|
SSA |
94 |
297 |
252 |
408 |
4465 |
3500 |
9016 |
|
Asia |
189 |
406 |
461 |
526 |
2274 |
2925 |
6781 |
|
LAC |
54 |
52 |
221 |
1090 |
1037 |
4218 |
6672 |
|
WANA |
11 |
31 |
78 |
142 |
1075 |
1436 |
2773 |
|
Global Totals |
348 |
786 |
1012 |
2166 |
8851 |
12079 |
25242 |
Source: CGIAR Secretariat
TAC's views on training have largely been shaped by the outcome of its training study (TAC/CGIAR, 1986). In 1985, TAC recommended that training should continue to receive high priority within the CGIAR System. However, there should be some shifts in emphasis in the long term corresponding to the changing roles of partners in the global research system.
As the System's training efforts have progressed, some programmes (mainly production courses) have been successfully transferred to national institutions, with backstopping from the centres. TAC encourages this process as an effective way of expanding the impact of the centres' training efforts, and recommends that it be intensified in the future. To this end, centres should collaborate with national systems to help them strengthen their capacity to organize and conduct production-oriented courses.
TAC has already advised that the centres should scale down their production and breeding courses at headquarters. Decentralized training is more applicable to national needs and conditions, as well as less expensive. Instead, centres should concentrate on the training of trainers to work at the national level, and on the preparation of training materials. In 1985, TAC recommended that the centres should continue to offer at headquarters the short, highly focused courses in research methods and specialized skills. In both of these areas, TAC encouraged greater inter-centre cooperation, which would result in enhanced cost-efficiency. TAC considered that mid-career training should continue and that the degree-related programmes should be strengthened, primarily at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. level.
For most commodities and regions, there is a need to continue to reduce CGIAR involvement in production-oriented courses. Such courses should not be funded through core resources of the CGIAR. Complementary funding for courses is readily available from bilateral donors. Responsibility for the organization of production-oriented courses should be transferred to regional mechanisms or to strong national programmes willing to accept regional responsibilities. CGIAR Centres have already provided training to a high proportion of national programme scientists, and diminishing returns to further investments may be experienced.
In the future, the CGIAR will have to give greater attention to training that will equip national scientists to deal with the mounting concern for sustainability and resource management issues. It will also have to develop training activities in fisheries, forestry and agroforestry, as national capacities in these areas are very weak at present. With respect to agricultural research, the System should give higher priority to training in research management, possibly through close collaboration between ISNAR and the centres, and to postdoctoral fellowships. Although efforts will be required in the new areas of forestry and fisheries and the management of natural resources, it must be recognized that there is a need for lead time for research to develop a training capacity.
In any research institution, information is required as a key input into its activities (as data, methods, techniques, etc), but it is also an output of those activities (as published results of experiments, annual reports, etc). The CGIAR Centres have a requirement for information inputs similar to those of other research institutes, but they have a much more important information output function. They exist to serve the developing countries in research and training; they have a commitment to assist them in strengthening their own capabilities; and they also have a truly international role to play in bringing national research programmes closer together to promote collective activities, including the free exchange of knowledge, information and genetic resources.
Advances in information technology provide unprecedented opportunities for increasing the speed and reducing the cost of conducting agricultural research. New ways of collecting, storing, processing, communicating and disseminating information have already begun to influence how agricultural researchers practise their profession. New communication technology has opened new avenues for collaborative research, providing links among programmes that are scattered around the globe.
The individual CGIAR Institutions and the System as a whole need to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the information revolution. Not only do individual centres need to adjust their internal information management mechanisms to take full account of advances in technology, but the System needs to examine its component mechanisms to ensure appropriate inter-centre "coupling" and information compatibility. As part of the same process, centres also need to examine how their systems could be coupled to those of national institutions in the developing countries, as well as to those of other actors on the international scene such as FAO and CABI.
In the long term, national research systems in developing countries should be able to participate as fully fledged actors in the global research effort. To do so, they need to narrow the widening gap in information technology between themselves and their partners in international research. In the short and medium term, the centres have an obligation to collaborate with others in helping the national systems to build or upgrade their information management capacities.
Also in the long term, emerging information and communication technology will enable the components of the global agricultural research community to be linked to each other more closely than at present. As the demand for new information products and services increases, cost-effective ways of meeting that demand will be sought. Whether under the CGIAR umbrella or not, there will probably be a need for an international mechanism to coordinate global information products and services, using decentralized nodes around the globe.
The needs and demands on the CGIAR System for assistance in organization and management counselling are great - well beyond its capacity to respond. The most pressing needs arise in the poorer and smaller countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where research capacity must be strengthened if the current problems are to be solved.
The CGIAR System's response to national needs for institution building, although modest in terms of resources, is broadly based. The centres have all played important roles in institutional development including, the organization of research networks, the provision of consulting services, and the creation of links between national systems and specialized research institutes. The impact of these efforts has been somewhat uneven, however, as much of it has been limited to the context of specific activities determined by individual centre mandates.
For almost ten years, the centres' efforts have been complemented, however, by those of the lead centre ISNAR, which provides, on a country-by-country basis, a comprehensive, integrated and systematic approach to strengthening national agricultural research systems. The impact of this approach has not yet been systematically evaluated, but its appeal has been demonstrated by the number of demands for assistance received from national systems, which outrun ISNAR's capacity to respond. With its limited resources, ISNAR plays an essentially catalytic role, focusing on the diagnosis and analysis of institutional constraints and the development of management approaches to overcome them. ISNAR's objective is to help national systems to help themselves, in cooperation with other centres and with multilateral and bilateral development assistance agencies.
ISNAR is currently revising its strategy and has recently undergone an external review. The report of the external review will be presented to the CGIAR in 1992. At that time TAC will make specific recommendations on the role of ISNAR in an expanded and restructured CGIAR.
In 1986, TAC considered that institutional weaknesses would continue to place major limitations on technology generation and adaptation in the national systems of many countries in the short to medium term. This would reduce the potential impact of CGIAR research, which relied on further applied and adaptive research at national levels to facilitate technology adoption. TAC therefore recommended that institution building should remain a high priority area for the CGIAR System in the future.
TAC considered that the essentially catalytic role of the CGIAR in institution building was highly appropriate for the challenges ahead. It recommended that the System should continue to play a lead role in developing closer links and more effective collaboration between national systems, the centres themselves, and external sources of expertise and funding, such as the multilateral and bilateral development assistance agencies. Experience had shown that innovative approaches to institution building on a comprehensive country-by-country basis will be necessary for strengthening agricultural research in the poorer countries. TAC believed that the CGIAR System should play a lead role in stimulating and organizing such approaches.
Building national research capacity is one of the goals of the CGIAR. As the Impact Study and the external reviews have indicated, the CGIAR Centres have made enormous contributions to strengthening national research systems through their activities in training, information and the development of technology. In future, collaborative relationships between the CGIAR Centres and national research systems will increasingly augment the System's more traditional contribution to institution building.
10.5.1. Appropriate Roles for CGIAR Centres
10.5.2. Mechanisms for Collaboration
10.5.3. Linking Centre Activities to Research Assistance
The term national research system is now used by TAC to include all those institutions in the public and private sectors, including universities, that are potentially capable of contributing to research related to the development of agriculture, forestry and fisheries. These institutions vary greatly in their strengths and weaknesses in a multiplicity of ways and for a wide variety of reasons.
Research capacity in national research systems may suffer from deficiencies such as an insufficient number of trained scientists, the quality of their education, or the effectiveness of their leadership. The suitability of the environment to engender productive research may also vary enormously. Research may be inhibited by deficiencies such as lack of adequate research facilities, lack of access to information, lack of prospects for career development, or unstable budgetary support. By inference there is a large array of potential weaknesses in national research systems. In this document the terms "stronger" and "weaker" national research systems are used to imply that the stronger are more likely, and the weaker less likely, to deliver a worthwhile research output, whatever the causes might be.
Currently, there is no comprehensive statement of CGIAR policy on the relationships between CGIAR Centres and national research systems in the developing countries. The policies applied by TAC in assessing centre programmes and budgets are based on the series of policy documents that have come before the Group from time to time. Among these, the most relevant are the First Review of the CGIAR (1976), the Second Review of the CGIAR (1981), and the 1985 TAC Review of CGIAR Priorities and Future Strategies (TAC/CGIAR 1987b).
The documents are consistent in that they regard the CGIAR Institutions, with the exception of ISNAR and IBPGR, as being primarily research institutions, but with additional roles in closely related aspects of training, information services and, in some instances, the dissemination of germplasm. They are also consistent in recommending that the centres should not become directly involved in national research programmes, except when there is a clear need to do so, on a selective basis, in order to fulfil their mandates.
None of these earlier documents has penetrated deeply into such questions as the extent to which centres should or should not become directly involved in strengthening national research systems. Nor have they discussed in detail the extent to which the international research funded by the CGIAR might be undertaken by the national systems themselves rather than by the centres.
Individual scientists and research institutions collaborate in many different ways to undertake research. Any of these relationships can also involve an international organization, or a donor agency, not in the role of research, but in a facilitating or strengthening role. Because of the involvement of centres in roles of this type, TAC has distinguished among several different, but inter-related types of activity, some of which it regards as entirely legitimate for CGIAR Centres while others appear more controversial.
It is important to distinguish between strengthening the relationships among the participants in collaborative research, and strengthening the research capacity of one or more of them. Examples of strengthening relationships in research may be seen in the ways in which many different international organizations seek to fulfil their mandates.
For example, most of the organizations operating under the auspices of the ICSU function in this way. Typically, an ICSU organization acts as a catalyst to collaborative research by convening symposia, paying travel expenses, assisting in the publication of conference proceedings and, generally, encouraging or strengthening the relationships among the participants. The CGIAR Centres do likewise for the networks they support. To function effectively in these roles, the centres have often outposted staff members to regional offices to act as liaison scientists and in coordinating and consultancy roles.
TAC defines this type of assistance as "catalytic assistance" - aimed at increasing output through stimulating the reaction, rather than by augmenting one of the reagents. Strengthening the relationships among scientists and institutions in developing countries, and between them and the centres, through catalytic assistance has an important institution-building function. In this respect, catalytic assistance can make important contributions to strengthening national research capacity.
Other forms of assistance are designed to augment national research capacity more directly. This type of assistance to national research systems comprises various forms of technical and financial assistance. Financial assistance in this context includes capital grants for laboratories, equipment, vehicles etc, as well as any funding designed to supplement the normal research budget of a developing country, or the emoluments of its staff.
Most donors define technical assistance as the provision of expertise that is a substitute for national expertise. It is sometimes difficult, however, to distinguish clearly between substituting for national expertise in a "technical assistance" role and working with national scientists in an "institution-building" role. In general, outposted centre scientists are regarded as fulfilling an institution-building role when they work with a group of countries, rather than with a single country. But working with individual countries on a strictly temporary or consultancy basis can also be regarded as a contribution to institution building, especially if training or scientific exchange is involved. TAC has used the term "research assistance" to include technical assistance, financial assistance, or any combination of the two. It uses other terms only when they are essential for clarity.
"Research assistance", as defined above, is central to the controversy surrounding what the CGIAR Centres should or should not do. It hinges on the extent to which centres should become involved in the provision of research assistance, or its administration, within bilateral projects. Although research assistance directly strengthens national research capacity, it does not necessarily do so on a sustainable basis.
TAC's view is that the CGIAR Centres should make their main contributions to strengthening national research systems through scientific collaboration, and by providing the outputs of their work in the form of information and improved genetic material. As they were created to serve the needs of developing countries, however, they are also expected to contribute to institution building through training and other activities.
As already described, their training activities extend well beyond those associated with post graduate degrees into specialized training courses for scientists at all stages of their careers, reflecting changing needs and perspectives. The centres are also expected to provide catalytic assistance to strengthen collaboration among scientists and institutions in every way that is possible and appropriate. Some or all of these activities might also involve the outposting of centre scientists to work with groups of countries in the most important regions served by that particular centre. All these functions of the centres are largely uncontroversial and are supported by TAC.
None of the above measures can be effective, however, unless there is a certain minimum capacity within the national system to do research, as well as to establish effective links both with the centres and with local producers through the extension services. Where this minimum capacity is lacking, the centres have collaborated with bilateral donors in the provision of research assistance, rather than face the frustration of not being able to transfer the benefits of their work.
The issue of strengthening national research systems is very much broader, however, than finding appropriate mechanisms for administering research assistance. It involves all the considerations with which ISNAR and IFPRI, among many others, are especially concerned and also involves several different mechanisms for collaboration.
10.5.2.1. Types of collaboration
10.5.2.2. Cooperative research
10.5.2.3. Contract research
In any research relationship, whether between scientists or institutions, two fundamental questions are: (i) "Who sets the research agenda?"; and (ii) "Who provides the financial resources and through what channels?". In the continuum of possible relationships between two hypothetical institutions, A and B, TAC sees two extremes. In one, the aims of the research are mutually agreed by A and B. They share the work; they fund their own participation; they share the results; and there is no net flow of financial resources, either from A to B or from B to A. TAC defines this type of relationship as "cooperative".
At the other extreme, A determines what the aims of the work should be and pays B to do it. This TAC calls "contract" research, or a "contractual" relationship. In this relationship, B is usually described as the contractor (the one who does the work) and A the customer (the one for whom the work is done). If both A and B are research institutions, A could equally be a contractor for B.
Clearly, there are many variations between these two extremes in the ways in which institutions collaborate with one another. The term "collaboration" is used in this general sense. Where these collaborative arrangements are neither wholly cooperative nor wholly contractual, they usually contain elements of both.
These terms can also be used when several institutions are linked in a networking mode. The relationships can be described as cooperative, when the participants jointly define the aims and share the costs, or contractual, when a customer determines the aims and pays the other institutions to do the work. The customer could be a single institution or a group of institutions working collaboratively. Moreover, all these relationships can be further analyzed taking into account the two types of assistance already identified above, namely, "catalytic assistance", designed to strengthen relationships and thereby contribute to institution building, and "research assistance", designed to strengthen national research capacity more directly.
The motivation for cooperative research is primarily one of self-interest. Individual scientists or institutions agree to participate so that the results of their own research can be interpreted within a broader context.
In the developed countries, cooperative research of this type may involve organizations in both the public and private sectors. It is often organized under the auspices of an international organization or scientific society, and may involve no external input of funding whatever. Frequently, all the participants fund their own attendance at meetings and share the organizational and analytical work among themselves. In other instances, catalytic assistance may be provided by the organization acting as the umbrella for the cooperation.
In the developing countries, only a small proportion of research institutions are able to muster the financial resources to operate without the external injection of at least some catalytic assistance. In many instances, however, even the provision of catalytic assistance is not enough. There are many national institutions which would like to participate but cannot do so without some additional funding, defined here as research assistance.
The main advantage of contract research is that it provides a means of exploiting specialized capabilities or special circumstances and, consequently, of doing research in a cost-effective manner. In the context of the CGIAR, the principle of contracting to institutions, in both the developed and developing countries, has already been applied by the centres to take advantage of special skills or particular environmental conditions within a national system that can be used to further the purpose of the international programme.
With respect to the developing countries, such contracts provide opportunities for making use of well trained personnel, giving them greater motivation and helping generally to strengthen national research capabilities. The direct costs involved might be less than those of doing the work at an international centre, but the administrative costs of awarding contracts, monitoring their progress, and evaluating their success tend to be high, especially when large numbers of small contracts are involved. Further, contract research precludes the involvement of weaker national systems. And even those with well trained scientists may not be able to undertake contracts because of the lack of basic facilities for laboratory or field research. Consequently, many potentially important institutions, in terms of the agroecologies or ecosystems they represent, might be excluded from undertaking contracts unless they could also be provided with research assistance.
While TAC strongly supports the involvement of the centres in both cooperative and contractual relationships with national research systems, it has reservations on the extent to which the centres should become involved in the administration of bilateral research assistance. Clearly, there is considerable diversity of views on this issue among members of the CGIAR, especially because there are organizations other than the centres that specialize in what are, essentially, the activities of development agencies.
Within the matrix of activities relating to international research and the adoption of its results, there is a need to define the framework within which the centres should operate. Ultimately, such a framework must be defined by consensus, otherwise it will simply evolve as a result of the ways in which donors express their preferences through their selective support of centre activities. TAC can assess the appropriateness and balance of core programmes and make recommendations to the Group accordingly. It is less well placed, however, to assess complementary programmes, which are influenced by a great diversity of needs, relationships and sources of funding.
TAC therefore considers that the centres themselves should determine the extent of their involvement in research assistance, taking a pragmatic view of the opportunities for productive collaboration with national systems, and keeping their activities within the boundaries of their agreed strategic plans. Centre Boards should be held accountable to the Group for all complementary programmes, especially with respect to safeguarding the integrity of unrestricted core funding. TAC assumes that both the Group and the centres would wish to guard against centre strategies becoming distorted by the wishes of individual donors or groups of donors.
