isnar
March 2, 1995
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INTERNATIONAL SERVICE FOR NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH | ||
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Headquarters |
Correspondence |
Communications |
Donald L. Winkelmann
TAC Chair
TAC Secretariat
FAO
Via delle Terme di Caracalle
Rome 00100, Italy
TAC 66: REPORT OF THE PANEL OF THE CGIAR COMMITMENTS IN WEST AFRICA
Dear Mr. Winkelmann:
The earlier draft of this report was discussed by Center Directors with TAC during the joint meeting in Washington in October of 1994. The CDC requested that we be given a chance for a full review. In Washington it was accepted that CDC comments were to be sent to the authors. Furthermore, it was agreed that the Center Director comments would be attached as an annex to the final report. Finally, the hope was expressed that the draft report would not be widely circulated, as it may mislead readers.
The Center Directors submitted individual as well as combined comments to the authors, the latter are attached to this letter in their unedited form. Mr. McIntire refers at length to them in his letter of submission to you. In some cases he accepted our comments, in other he rejected them, or dealt with them only partially.
Unfortunately, time is now too short to request all Center Directors to review the "finalized" TAC paper and forward you their individual detailed or any CDC combined comments. There are a number of statements in the final report to which some of my colleagues would disagree. At this time I will make only the following major points on the report as it stands now:
1. Many conclusions reached by the authors lack supporting evidence. (Why would regional coordination in the social sciences be more appropriate in West Africa than in the other regions?) Others are generalizations and might be applicable in some instances, but certainly not for all countries or for all centers.2. Natural scientists and agriculturists would disagree with some of the emphasis given or conclusions reached in the report. (For example: hybrid seed under local conditions of production might not be superior in many countries; they require inter alia appropriate national policies, adequate institutional support, assured provision of various inputs, and a strong national seed industry.)
3. The recommendation to reduce the work on production systems and "resource management" research not only contradicts the proposed ecoregional approach and the future emphasis on natural resource management, but is a hasty conclusion in light of the limited time and resources so far invested in the many existing as well as potentially viable production systems in West Africa. Furthermore, most national programs lack the human and the financial resources to absorb this important work.
4. The report still does not do justice to the manifold aspects and intricacies of institution building. The resources for the latter cannot and should not be reduced. There is considerably more to institution building than general training and information
5. The report misinterprets and does not do justice of many aspects and problems of small NARS. While small NARS are generally weak, not all weak NARS in West Africa are small. For the small NARS the report proposes more training, with the assumption that the trained manpower can then be absorbed by the government. The government should then also be able to provide the necessary financial and physical resources for effective and efficient research.
In conclusion, while the report makes a valuable contribution to the discussion about the different problems in agricultural research and development in West Africa, it is insufficient to guide decisions on the future commitments of the CGIAR in that region. Further comments could, of course, be provided by Center Directors, should this be requested by TAC.
Finally, we propose that as the next step the report be discussed with the NARS leaders of the countries covered, in order to underline the role of our partners in such important subjects.
With best regards,
C. Bonte-Friedheim
Chair,
Center Directors Committee
cc: Guido Gryseels, Deputy Executive Secretary TAC
Encl.
Report of the Panel on CGIAR Commitments in West Africa
Comments by Centre Directors Committee
1. The Panel has addressed an extensive task in a relative short time. While the Centre Directors Committee has reservations on some of the recommendations, it wishes to acknowledge the large amount of very useful information gathered, and the many constructive recommendations made by the Panel.
2. The chapter on the economies of West Africa provides an excellent description of the economic, structural, environmental, and technical constraints that any agricultural research organizations faces in this region.
3. The Panel's review of research institutions clearly shows the difficulties the NARS are facing. However, it does not adequately address the opportunities for assisting the small NARS. For example, the Panel notes: "But where national institutions are so weak as to be almost completely ineffective, as is the case of practically all countries in this group (small countries), then the only practical solution is to have a focused bilateral project, tied to a foreign university because of the importance of adequate academic training in developing national capacity, that seeks to create a core national institution." This statement ignores the excellent cooperation between Centres and all NARS in the region, including the small ones, through a large variety of formal and informal linkages between the Centres, other research institutions, and the NARS.
4. The statement also goes against ISNAR's findings on the small countries' research programmes. Small countries need a flexible research system, closely linked to national policymakers, which can scan a wide range of external sources to match technologies to national demands, and give advice to farmers and policymakers. Tying a NARS to a single donor agency or a foreign university does not build a flexible system, it does not strengthen the link to national policy, and it does not encourage NARS to scan widely and use innovative linkage mechanisms. Unfortunately, many small NARS in West Africa have fallen into dependency on a single donor or university. The results are not promising. There is a loss of institutional identity, and a tendency for researchers to see themselves as employees of the donor agency as opposed to the national system. There are problems of parallel management between donor technical assistance teams and national counterparts, and a feeling of loss of autonomy.
5. The Panel expects that CGIAR commitments in the region will stay high, and it gives various reasons for this. It does not see significant areas of overlap in the ongoing CGIAR activities. While this may be correct, it is somewhat surprising that mainly financial arguments are used for these conclusions. Alternatively, emphasis on matters such as the need for working together as a system and streamlining the relationships with NARS might have led to the development of - recommendations for more common approaches in the future. In West Africa, the Centres are continuously working on these relationships.
6. The Panel notes that Nigeria has absorbed 56% of IARC resources in West Africa. However, as the Panel acknowledges, the IARCs are not bilateral research aid organizations. Centres have established programmes at locations in Nigeria judged to be the best for conducting ecoregional research in the humid and subhumid zones of West Africa, not to favour Nigeria. Elsewhere in the report, the Panel itself uses the representativeness and extent of these zones in Nigeria, and the opportunities to draw on collaboration of NARS and extension services, as arguments to support its recommendation that two IFPRI staff be located in Nigeria.
7. The report draws a number of conclusions with respect to administrative costs. It shows the complexity of the matter, and the difficulty of comparing costs as presented by the various Centres. Any Centre that works in the region will have administrative costs. The report states: "Another assertion is that administration costs are higher than those of like institutions in the industrialized countries." In fact, however, the percentage overhead costs of the Centres are about half that charged by institutions in industrialized countries. A more detailed and accurate analysis of overhead costs is needed before firm conclusions can be stated.
8. The suggestion in the Panel's report that resources to be shifted from research on production systems and management to germplasm enhancement and breeding and that the African centres pull back to little more than breeding is untenable. It also demonstrates a failure to understand and put to work the lessons that some 30 years of agricultural R&D have provided. Although strategic breeding is indeed a great strength of many Centres in Africa, its potential benefits depend heavily on other critical aspects of agricultural R&D.
9. For example, for obvious reasons, crop varieties that require significant amounts of costly and often-unavailable external inputs are not likely to assist the majority of women and men farmers in Africa. And even where such inputs are affordable and available, there may be, for example, serious environmental and human health implications linked with the use of agrochemicals. Thus crop varieties must be configured to work in tandem with low-external-input and environmentally friendly complements: on the one hand, things like new techniques of seedbed preparation, plant spacing, weed control, soil management, composting, water harvesting, and so forth; and on the other, technologies like biological control and IPM.
10. To develop such environmentally and socioeconomically appropriate 'packages', research is required in these other domains of agricultural R&D, just as much as in breeding. Otherwise, the breeding effort will be vitiated. In any case, as breeders themselves will readily agree, it is extremely difficult to include every desired trait in every variety. New varieties will generally need to be accompanied by other elements of production improvement.
11. Many researchable questions are obviously best addressed by agricultural disciplines other than plant genetics alone. Such questions must be answered before embarking upon a breeding initiative, so as to guide and target breeding efforts in an efficient way. Leaving these questions solely to the NARS, as the stripe report would seem to urge, opens up the possibility of poorly directed breeding efforts in which a great deal of scarce scientific, human and financial resources could be squandered.
12. This is not to say that NARS should not do the work of fitting varieties into specific farming systems. Quite the contrary. It is to say, however, that if Centres forego research in these other critical areas of the R&D enterprise, their breeding work is likely to suffer in terms of ultimate impact. Neither would Centres then have the basic knowledge or capacity to advise and assist NARS in their efforts to further develop varieties for local use. Centres would be left in the position of just 'guessing' and releasing varieties and hoping for the best.
13. The Panel has made its recommendation on the shift in resources based on the perceived limited impact of centre research on production systems and management compared to the impact of crop improvement research. It did not, however, present specific criteria on how such impact should be measured, either in terms of better understanding of the complex production systems, or in terms of significant changes and improvement in production practices. Such evaluations should, for example, take into account the different timeframes over which changes may reasonably be expected.
14. The Panel's recommendation that the process of devolution should be assisted by Centres with funding from their own core budgets, with appropriate reallocations from category 3, completely ignores the limited resources available to the IARCs and the inappropriateness of using these funds as if IARCs are donors. Contrarily, the Panel in its commentary on institution building argues the IARCs have no role there. With the example of the 'Second Agricultural Research Project in Senegal', the Panel correctly notes that the IARCs have no comparative advantage in institution building, which requires greater resources, a wider perspective, and political reforms that they cannot effect.
15. The CG system is now embarking on ecoregional approaches, in which both sustainable resource management and improved productivity research needs will be addressed together with various partners, in particular the NARS. In these new cooperative efforts, the CG system should make full use of production systems and management research results achieved so far and also assist in identifying additional research needs.
16. There are hardly any references to water in the entire text, which is strange considering that the Sudano-Sahelian zones have very adverse water/people ratios. Irrigation is dismissed in a few sentences, the conclusion being that "irrigated agriculture... is not usually economic." There is no consideration as to whether cost-reduction might be an appropriate objective for a management approach, or whether the recent devaluation of the CFA franc might alter the economics in countries of francophone West Africa. The report also appears to discount the strong interest shown by governments in exploring fully the possibility of applying irrigation to their food security needs.
17. The report defines the scope of activities linked to institution building too narrowly, to include only training and information. Direct institution building benefits that can be derived from regional networking include: (1) experience in priority setting, development of sound research projects, resource allocation/management, and reporting; (2) improved awareness of and access to new research methodologies, results, and technologies; (3) reallocation of natural resources to activities in which institutions have a regional comparative advantage; and (4) improved morale of national scientists by working with regional disciplinary peers. In these discussions, the activities of IIMI with respect to improving the capabilities of NARS to manage irrigation systems should have been mentioned.
18. The authors of the report do recognize that there is more to institutional development than training and information, but they suggest that it should be done by institutions such as university consortia and consultants rather than IARCs. While it is true that commodity oriented centres have no comparative advantage in institutional development in general, they can make a valuable contribution (with ISNAR), to strengthening the quality of research through better research planning and improved research methods, etc. Station development, which in the report is suggested as the single contribution of ISNAR to the region, should also be done in conjunction with Centres across the region. It would make sense that such training take place on research sites.
19. The Panel concludes that the root cause for institutional weakness of the NARS is their flimsy political commitment to research and extension. But the lack of policy commitment alone cannot explain the poor performance of West African NARS. The post colonial experience of many countries in the region is fairly limited and the management tradition of research institutions has not been effectively replaced. There were few national scientists in colonial research organizations who could carry over a management tradition for effective research organizations. NARS of the colonial period, and of the post colonial period in some cases, functioned very much as developed country institutions; they did not experience serious financial difficulties, and their staff was recruited from a much wider resource pool than is available to present day NARS. Their incentives were substantial and promotion mechanisms were clear and operational. They did not have to cope with the difficulties of managing pools of equipment provided by several donors, with their own purchasing constraints. They never had to report to as many donors, each one with his own reporting requirements, and they would never have tolerated the project management mechanisms now imposed by donors as a way to ensure proper management of their projects.
20. If the policy environment is to blame, surely donors must be considered part of the policy environment in which NARS had to function, and many of the problems they faced were indeed created not only by their governments but by well intentioned donors. The failure to take into consideration essential management dimensions in project design, and the disregard for institutional development, can explain many of the failures of NARS. It would be convenient to lay the blame on policy but it would not be accurate. Institutional development may be as important, if not more, to the development of performing NARS.
21. The current indifference or hostility to non-public institutions involved in technology generation and transfer can be explained in a historical perspective. Most countries with a thriving agriculture relied on public institutions to develop technologies and promote their diffusion in the farming community. Developing countries are simply trying to copy models of development that have proved highly successful: as in USA, the European Union, etc. Can we blame them for following such models rather than adopting the untested measures recommended by policy analysts who have little stake in the country's development. Often, such policy prescriptions recommend the adoption of measures that are in vogue in developed countries, but which have little relevance in the present environment of NARS.
22. Managing research through competitive research contracts is a case in point. It makes a great deal of sense in countries where the labour market is fully developed, and where individuals are supported by competitive institutions. The current shift towards natural resource management research following the Earth Summit of Rio illustrates the case. Developed countries can rely on the extent of their resource markets to hire new skills and shift promptly to the new agenda. Most West African countries, with the possible exception of Nigeria, will probably have to recruit young scientists, send them abroad for training, wait a few years while they are in training, count on losing a few (to non-public institutions operating in the region), and then operate the change. At best, only a few will be available at any one time in a given subject matter area. Competitive grants to researchers is an interesting institutional innovation, based on experience in developed countries, which does not take into consideration the challenge of managing research organizations in developing countries.
23. Early interventions of the private sector in the USA and Europe were obviously tied to areas where the private sector could reap the benefits of its efforts, such as in farm machinery development in the USA, or in crop improvement. They did not invest in areas where the technology was more of a 'public good' character. If we consider the recommendation of the report to devolve much of the work in 'production systems and management' to NARS, it would seem that that will increase reliance on public institutions, as a non-public institution will not have much gain from developing technologies it will not be able to sell.
24. In the overview of private sector research, the unwillingness of some West African countries to liberalize intellectual property restrictions is mentioned. However, the basis for this concern is not elaborated; as such it may be interpreted as an unjustified CGIAR interference in national policy matters.
25. The Panel's observations on impact are tenuous. The Panel's comments rely upon Jahnke et al., (1985), which was not based on primary data from research sites or beneficiaries. The Panel has not added any significant evidence on which to base its assessment of impact. The Panel's conclusions seem to be needlessly provocative, but the Panel should be aware of the reports on scientific and production impact that have appeared over the years since 1985.
26. The suggestion that IFPRI be named as a strong convening centre for socioeconomics research in the region is too sweeping. We agree that economics research in the centres could be better linked, and that IFPRI could play an effective coordinating role for policy research. But the orientation and focus of IFPRI research, as set out in their MTP, differ significantly from the objectives of most economics research now conducted in commodity oriented Centres, which aim at micro-level technology development and evaluation.
27. While the original version of this report was a 'draft', it certainly has achieved wide availability within the System, and perhaps beyond it, since it was made available to donors attending the TAC meeting at ICW'94. This is most unfortunate, particularly in view of the concerns expressed regarding its content. The interests of the Centres and the sensitivity and needs of the donors would surely demand that draft reports of this kind are managed carefully before release.
