 Most of you know her already, from her prolific success in supporting the ag and food sector in Africa, and indeed from her international engagements in food system transformation more generally. Dr. Calibata is the president of Agra, where she leads the organization's efforts with public and private partners to ensure food security and prosperity in Africa. Through support to inclusive and sustainable ag growth, Agra is working under her leadership to improve the productivity and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in Africa. Many of you know that. From 2019 to 2021, Dr. Calibata also served as the special envoy of the UN Secretary General, you remember, for the 2021 Food Systems Summit. That was a process at the start of a decade of action to improve food systems around the world to deliver on the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. So her international engagements also extend to numerous boards, so hang on, councils and commissions, including the Global Commission on Adaptation, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, the Global Panel for Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, I'm not finished, so stay with me. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, the Food Systems Stewardship Board of the World Economic Forum, the Malibu Montpellier Panel, the Architecture for Red Plus Transactions and the Global Commission on Climate Overshoot, as well as for this year the Advisory Committee of the Presidency of COP28. Prior to joining Agra, Dr. Calibata was Rwanda's Minister of Agriculture for Minigree, where she drove programs that moved her country from a food insecure situation to a food secure status and became a reference point for other countries wanting to do the same. And of course, as a guest to our CGR Scaling Week, we must flag that she is one of us, having a distinguished track record as an agricultural scientist, holding a doctorate in entomology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and numerous academic accolades, but more important than all of this, of course, having worked at the CG itself early in her career. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Calibata, thank you for coming. So Agnes, you've been with Agra since 2014, and I imagine you've seen a thing or two in that time, you know, Agra by now has extensive success and experience in delivering proven solutions to smallholder farmers and enterprises. Some of these solutions actually came, some of these technologies came from the CGIR. So I guess we're wondering, Agra had managed to successfully bring them to scale, what were the ingredients to that success? Yeah, so just allow me, Lorraine, to step back one second and forget, and mention, you forgot to mention, worked together in Rwanda, so it takes, there's no success. Someone told me a while ago that success has many parents. So there's no single person that can stand here and say, oh, Rwanda was successful, so it was Agnes. I mean, if I was successful, it's because I worked with people like you and so many other people that did support the work we are doing. And I also just really want to appreciate being here, to have an engagement with the CGIR because there are a number of reasons why we must talk, there are a number of reasons why we must engage. I mean, we completely believe in the work that you all do, and I'm very happy with the work that you do. And just like you all are anxious at the pace at which this work gets to the farmer. So we have a shared value there. How would we get what you do to the farmer, given the value and all that? Number three, we are funded by the same people. So seeing our work build on each other is definitely something that would make all of us look good in terms of getting work out there, but also that would make all the people that are looking for value for money, investing in you and investing in us, that is much more meaningful for them. So I just wanted to really put that on the table. Now in terms of the work we do at Agra, just to put things in perspective a little bit, having come from the CGIR, because again I worked for IITA as a research assistant. I was trained under IITA and I left to join the government of Rwanda as a post-doc at IITA. I had a post-doc at IITA. So I did definitely appreciate the work that is happening in the CGIR and what you all are trying to do. Once I joined the government, the first thing that came to my mind was I have friends in the CGIR. I definitely can get this done. I know what needs to be done and have friends in the CGIR. So I must say there was a little bit of frustration there, right? And I'm sure you're all going to understand this. Because in government, if you are a minister and you're able to last two years, then you really are lucky. You really are lucky. So if you're a minister, I mean look around. I've been in Agra for eight years now and in each country I can tell you I have lived through three ministers at minimum. Three ministers at minimum. So I definitely did understand that being a minister out there, I don't have the luxury I had as a scientist in the CGIR. All my colleagues had a scientist in the CGIR because we are held to different accountability metrics. You're held to getting that technology out of wherever the science, onto your table and my job is to get millions of farmers out there. And every time I talk to people, and this just contextualized the question asked me, and every time I talk to the scientist I worked with, I worked with in Rwanda, and I said, I know the CGIR has brought, I called a number of you, meaning institutions, I called IIT, I called WADA then, right, you remember WADA, now something else. All this I said, SEAT, I said people, I need ABCD, and they said, well, you already have the materials in your country. And I'm like, okay, then I go back to the scientist, I say, I really need these materials out there. You say, oh, yeah, I have half a kilo here, I have 10 grams here, I have two kilos here, and I'm like, okay. And the problem is nobody did step out of their comfort zone to tell me how that kilo would become 10,000 metric tons that I needed to give to farmers. Everybody just told me how they've done their part, and that was the most frustrating thing for me. Everybody had done their part, except that doing their part has not answered any of my questions as a minister. And again, my time, my clock is ticking, so I'm like, okay, so what do I do? So I quickly, I mean, worked out a formula, I came to Agra, then I said, people, I need an answer to this problem. CGIR is not helping me because I told me, Rwanda has the materials they need. I called my institution, they're telling me they have one kilo, I need to know what to do. So they directed me to a few seed companies. They said go to Kenya seed company, they said go to Suba, they told me a number of seed companies they worked with. So I mapped them out. Again, I was the scientist, I was still the scientist. So I mapped them out. I said, people, if I get stuff from Kenya, it doesn't work in Rwanda, I'll still be fired. If I get stuff from Tanzania, it doesn't work in Rwanda, I'll still be fired. So I was like, the science tells me that we are supposed to try this in Rwanda for 10 years or whatever, you know, I'm just making a joke, for three seasons or four seasons before I can visit two farmers, and I just don't have that time. So I called my scientists, I told them, can we, meaning the scientists, the NARS, the local, so I called them, can we map out agri-cologies? Help me understand. These are the materials that, luckily, these catalogs help. So these catalogs, they said, bring the catalogs, let's look what works where. And we mapped out about three, four varieties, and I said, we are going to do best bets. I'm going to lose my job anyway, so I'd rather lose it doing something. So I said, so let's do best bets. And in those best bets, we went to Kinyasid Company, we went to Suba, we went to some company in Uganda, I forget the name, that again, where Agra had directed us, that these companies actually do have some materials that can work. Because the challenge for Rwanda, I mean, if you're someone like me that was coming from perspective of the rest of the world is working from a food perspective, and Rwanda has all these agri-cologies, it's not working. You ask yourself what's wrong? So I said, let's do good bets. So we got, I wrote to each of these seed companies, and I said, I need this, I need this, I need this. I convinced my country to allow me to import seed. And we imported seed, and God would have it. Part of what I did in between there was just to pray for two things, that it will rain and that this seed will deliver. So that I don't have to answer that sad thing I have in my head. This seed has not been tried in Rwanda, I'm in real trouble. So as God would have it, so for those of you that believe in that, actually this seed is delivered. In one season alone, everybody was like, hey, what do we do with this maize? Almost it was like from hunger to what do we do with this maize? Now my problem was like, take your maize away. We don't know what to do with it. It's too much, it's too much everywhere, because for the first time they had been able to plant varieties in some parts of Rwanda that were drought-tolerant, they were not getting any yields. That year they were able to get yields and not just yields, good yields, because they planted drought-tolerant material. That year, some of the countries that are in the North where things take forever were able to plant some early maturing varieties and they were able to get some good yields. So anyway, long story short, Rwanda took on maize. By the way, we are not a typical maize eater. If you go, people will tell you Agnes introduced maize. I was just trying to deal with food security issues. We are not a typical maize eater, but long story short, we started talking about food security, we started raising hope from a hopelessness situation. Now, what does this story tell us, as my kids would say, the moral of the story goes back to the question you raised, Lorraine. What were the critical ingredients that Agra was building on? The power of the private sector, the incentives. It's not even so much just the power, what are the incentives for a system to work, right? And the incentives in there is the fact that you have a private sector that does see the opportunity and translate it into something that can work for smallholder farmers. But the most important part is not just because a seed company can produce seed. For me, the most transformational part of that whole system is someone called the agrodila, the person who is able to retail seed in the village in the village where a farmer can bite within three kilometers within. I mean, I grew up not seeing seed at all, probably because the nearest seed was 50 kilometers away. So imagine you have it in a village somewhere within five kilometers, right? For me, that understanding the incentive capacity capability that sits in the system and trying to understand how you can unlock using that was really, really important. So the agrodila had something to gain. The private sector person had something to gain. And the incentives were right for them to do this as a business. So these are some of the things that Agra took advantage of. But there are other things. The impact is important. So maize was an important commodity in this particular case because you could be able to demonstrate that you can actually deal with a question of hunger in a short period of time. So the impact part for governments that are trying to invest in driving systems, for governments that are trying to invest in food security, the impact part is extremely important. So you can't forget that impact part. And then understanding the skills bit, part of what Agra invested in, especially in the NAS from a NAS perspective, is empowering the NAS themselves, right? Giving them the ability. So I know that the CGIR works with the NAS, but I don't know if the model has evolved. You can't send a scientist to the NAS to babysit the NAS. You need to empower the NAS, right? These people in the NAS can deliver too. And I just feel like the city sometimes hoovers around too much, right? Yes, it's your material, but give them the opportunity. And I think this model has evolved a bit. But keeping it to the chest while letting it go doesn't work. You need to give them the power to do this work, to empower them to do this work. So we trained, right now this has moved way ahead. I think now there are over 1,000 out there because the universities are doing it themselves. We trained a number of scientists. These scientists in the system, and we gave them the resources and we monitored how they use those resources. But that ability to have resources that they can manage, that they feel accountable, that they know this is their thing, that they have a vision for how they come through is extremely important. And I feel like it took the city a long time to figure that out. Again, and I appreciate if you've gone this far to get a variety X to this level, you really don't want someone messing with it because I also know a situation where one of the agrar leaders in the seed system came through and people had mixed up the varieties. They couldn't tell which variety was what. So, but you can't get the things right if you're not prepared to make mistakes. Because in that process, the other things they got right as well. So, I do understand the need to hold things. But for us, empowering the seed, the NAS was a very powerful tool, giving them the resources to go and go do it. And yes, I know we are all struggling with resources, but how do we help them identify and find resources that empower them to be the institutions they should be? So, I think for agrar that works pretty well because we did have the resources back then. We no longer do a lot of it, but we did have the resources back then and we gave them the resources and we mostly try to provide oversight on how they use those resources, but they really felt empowered to go in there based on the demands they have in their countries to go in there and make things work and based on the materials they had. So, the demand part is important, not the supply part, right? Again, you've spent all this lifetime trying to get this variety here, but that's not what I'm looking for, right? The demand part is extremely important and that's why some of this comes in. Maybe the last bit, the empowering private sector wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't addressed two things. The skills bit, recognizing private sector skills gaps, right? This is a sense at the end of the day, doing all this stuff that you're doing is a sense. So, just because I have a vision for being in the seed industry, doesn't mean that I understand the sense, doesn't mean that I understand everything. So, we partnered with the University of Nairobi to provide training for private sector and they've set up a whole unit to train private sector all the way. If they needed to train some of their people on ABCD, we provided it. If they needed financial training, we provided it. If they needed wherever we provided it. So, CEMIS, which was a partnership with the University of Nairobi, was basically just to do that, bringing people from Bokina Faso, from wherever, wherever, and make sure that whichever seed company wants to do seed, these are the ABCD of doing seed and this is how the things you need to help to be a viable business in this industry. I think that worked a whole lot, recognizing their skills gaps and of course, supporting them to get capacity, more credible capacity like experts which they couldn't get on their own. So, for me, those things, when you put them together, started making it look like a seed system could be in place but there are other things, policies. Polices, the private sector can't work in a policy vacuum or in a place where policies are not very well defined and that was very critical. The NAS were also held back by certain policies. So, for example, I went to Ghana and I found that the private sector, the NAS were giving the materials you give them to private sector. They produce them and then they bring them and certify them. So, I'm like, so who is managing this? You're conflicted already. You're giving these people to produce. You're supposed to be providing quality control and you're bringing it and branding it under your name. You're lying to me that this is your stuff and it's not your stuff. So, but that whole thing was causing so many delays in the system. So, I said, but why don't we put in place where private sector is empowered to do this and have policies where they actually pay you for the regulatory environment that you're creating? If they don't do it right, you don't certify them. Make money from certification. Don't make money from selling seed that private sector has given you because it doesn't make sense. Private sector, you want to sell the seed. You're not going to put the rigor that you should be putting on that to ensure the right quality of seed. Why don't you just do your part and they do their part? Their part is to produce good quality seed. Your job is to ensure they produce good quality seed. Why don't you ensure that private sector does produce early generation seed under your supervision and you certify it, but don't pretend you produced it because again, when things go wrong, who would we hold accountable? So, I think some of that does have implications because it does, if I'm a person in the private sector, a business, a well-known business out there that already has my materials, why would I do that for you? Why would I produce material, give it to you and then you give it back to the government, to the public? I only need this for you to certify this roadmap. Anyway, just figuring out some of those policies and ensuring that we work with the governments. We had a meeting, we had to have a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture, the research institutions and have a conversation. People, how would we do this? Because we had realized that early generation seed is the bottleneck and the bottleneck is in quality, the bottleneck is in it not coming through and the bottleneck is in the capacity of the NAS to produce it. So, in many cases, now we've agreed that private sector can produce early generation seed under the supervision of the NAS and yes, if we can create incentive that allow the NAS to make money from that supervision process because they shouldn't do it for free, private sector should be able to pay for it as well and then they can sell those companies that are specialized in producing early generation seed, they can sell to bigger companies that are producing. So, the last point, as we are doing this, one of the things we did at the end was like, why don't we figure out how a system works in this whole industry? Because in the first phase, we spent a whole lot of doing these bits and pieces here, NAS, seed companies, policies here and there but we just decided we need to evaluate each system and understand the weakest element of each system. So, we did that with a few countries, we presented it to some of our partners and actually BMGF later picked it up and developed now what we call the seed start tool. Now, the seed start tool does evaluate a whole system from breeding all the way to the farmer and you try to understand what is broken in that system or the weakest link or the part that keeps breaking. Right, some of it is because of the breeding part maybe at the NAS, some of it is in the private sector area, some of it is in the policies that should be in place, some of it in whatever. But then it allows you to have visibility of where you should put your most energy to be able to move the seed system forward. So, it was on the basis of that work that now we have created a part of Agra which we are calling a center for CESA, center for something, something. But this CESA, what it is going to focus on is just working with the governments on the weakest links in a seed system that prevents technology from moving from research to the farmer. So, if you can continue chipping out some of these challenges by focusing on the weakest links then we will be able to do it and we are trying to get it to governments to do it themselves. I mean, that's a fantastic answer. I just noted down about a half a dozen of these success factors and one of them and you actually also came to answer a question that I had around the challenges. And when you talk about the sort of system assessments from start to finish, you also spoke in terms of your early days of government on that kind of upstream point where what do we do with the CGR innovations before we can get it to sort of 10 million farmers, et cetera. And I'm wondering in the system assessment that Agra is now doing, how often that is really the block? That sort of upstream segment, is that sort of a predominant issue? Or does it vary? Yeah, so I think there are a number of, sorry, there are a number of other things, it varies. So I was talking about it mostly from what we all are trying to do, right? You're trying to get stuff to farmers, we are trying to get stuff to farmers. We are trying to build a system that can deliver that complexity to farmers. But there are other people that would just love to superimpose on that system and get things done. Private sector, for example, right? And they have different challenges than us. What you're doing is mostly in public domain, it's public good, right? So your job and my job is to try to get it to as many farmers as possible. The private sector is also trying to make money, right? And the absence of IP systems that work for them, or policies that work for them, that help them ensure that things work, has almost, in some places, in some countries, it's working, in other countries, it's just difficult. So I feel like that's an added layer of difficulty that they are facing. But also there are policies that may not favor this type of partnership. So when I look at what now we've adopted as a continent, which is very, I always call it very unfortunate. This, and I know you are from the World Bank, so it is still unfortunate. But this whole subsidy thing, where seed become like a public good, I don't mind a farmer accessing seed. I don't mind a farmer having a basic capital to be part of a system. But we also have to think about sustainability of these systems, right? So when the incentives are extremely weak for signals for private sector to be in place, then it becomes very difficult to sustain a system. And then the challenge, you meet challenges like we have now when governments have debt challenges and challenges of resources. If you build a system that is 100% based on the type of subsidies you can put in place, you haven't built a private sector to be able to build on the system, what happens? So for me, these are some of the challenges that you and I don't think about. You and I think about how you get the most to the farmer. I mean in Rwanda to get iron fortified bins to farmers. Once I figured out that that was one of the most important things, I just gave a contract to people to produce as much as they could. And we did have a park for every household so that seeds can get out there because they are open pollinated. You know, they will be there once they are out there, they are out there. So the incentives for private sector are different. And then the other things that also suffered with general technology transfer. South to south, you might go to Vietnam, you look at something they are doing well and you think, oh, you should have this in your country. But all you should be doing this in your country but the system to get the decision process to get that type of work moving from an area of where you've seen it to the country where it's needed. It's almost like our countries are not set up to do that type of thing. So it becomes extremely challenging. And then the last bit is how you get to scale really at the end of the day. How you achieve scale without extension systems that work. How do you get all these things to scale? In part of the work we've been experimenting with is also just trying to try different models of extension. Just to try and trying to build in different incentives for extension to happen. So that we can partner with private sector. In our last strategy, we partnered with the private sector where private sector was supplying seed packs and we paid for extension. Also building on some of the work you've done where it shows that when a farmer does it on their own farm they're most likely to adopt it. And we had very high levels of adoption. And the beauty there was it was a shared cost between private sector and ourselves. So private sector is providing the seed packs of the different technologies. We are providing the initial support to extension. But then also like here in Kenya some counties came in and started moving on that. I think the technology transfer bit has to, the governments are not set up. There's still a system breakdown. I mean we are all trying to ensure that we move stuff from the CGR to farmers. But when it is a new technology you really need leadership. Very strong leadership in government and people that are willing to take responsibility for what they're introducing to be able to do something like that. So I think sometimes the lack of willingness to take responsibility holds back a lot of innovation and scaring of. And also it just means that I need to go to my government and just find where I need to do something. So where is that leadership? To say I'm going to put my foot down. Every random farmer must have I infertified bills. It costs money, I need my government to fund it. It costs leadership. I have to be 100% sure that to work number one, number two I have to be prepared to take responsibility. And there are no incentives for that type of leadership in the system. No but perhaps not but what I'm hearing you say also is that that kind of leadership needs support. What is the evidence arguments to support that leader to go and say look, for reasons X, Y, Z from the scientific community we have confidence that this is going to. So even perhaps what I'm hearing you say is that from the CG side or for those who develop the innovations is also to make those arguments and that evidence readily available to the leaders who are sticking their neck out to take responsibility for innovation. So that different part of the CJR that I would love to talk about the evidence based part of the CJR and IFPRI and others. And how countries access that information, how countries access that support. I mean part of the reason I whatever one would consider success and one the part of the reason we did what we did we actually were very adamant on getting IFPRI to be able to provide direction to be able to work with us and provide evidence. If I took this decision, why am I doing this? What direction would it take? And what would it yield? So that I can go to government and say these are my best, this is my best bet based on the evidence I have. So I think that part is under, right now is underutilized. And it will come in extremely handy. You know it comes in sometimes when government are doing what they call these big ideas, big strategies at the beginning but we also need to understand the agility of the system, ministers change. And when they change, they need to understand what should I be driving, number one. Number two, the system is also changing pretty fast especially with climate change. What do you want? Now I keep telling my institution if we are not doing a green revolution then what are we doing, right? And what's the science to support what I'm going to be telling farmers? Because we can't, I mean you live here, you know how aggregates bashed for basically having the world green revolution in our name. But that was the idea then and that was the idea then. And that's not what we need to be, yes. A few things have moved on from that. But what is the new story? What is the knowledge base? What's the evidence for that knowledge? What do I go out and tell farmers across the continent that we are working with that this is the new way of doing business? So I just feel like there's a little bit of catch up to do there, to move very fast and again coming from the food systems summit. For me that is the biggest challenge for a continent like the African continent where research needs to move pretty fast and catch up with the challenges we live with. And again it's very challenging. You're going to, your varieties will be probably needing a faster level of value. So many things are going to happen but also systems, agriculture, agroecological systems are going to be changing and are changing very fast. People are changing their diets. People are wanting different things and people are wanting different responses from different. So the need to generate, to generate knowledge, to generate evidence. If we don't want to leave it to all those people that are sitting and speculating, I think the CGIR is going to be under immense pressure to generate evidence of what works and of course with other scientists around the world to generate evidence of what works and how we should be going. And for me that's probably one of the things that worries me the most. Well I mean and that comes to sort of just before I invite our other panelists to the table. That actually comes to my last question because when you were serving as the UN Secretary General Special Envoy for the Food Summit, you know, the Food Summit had this three-part vision for a future food system, right? Helped the people, helped the planets and helped the economies as the bank would put it. It had its own version. You know and I was going to ask you what aspects of the future you see most in need of the scientific community of innovation and what I'm hearing you say just now is not just okay you could list the climate change challenges, et cetera, but it's the agility. The agility to move sort of more quickly to respond and show evidence of what works. Is that correct? Yeah, I think we need to start with a few good bits again. Every situation needs a few good bits. So again if we are not going to be working with a green revolution, we need to come up with a few good bits that can secure some type of certainty in the system. There's nothing that works as poor as lack of certainty in the system. We need to secure a certain base of certainty in the system. I see a whole lot of people going into regenerative agriculture. I don't know whether that is led by science or whether it is led by what we think, all of us in different places. I see a lot of agroecological direction. I don't know what is leading that. I would love to see the science and why that is, you know, and there could be quite a number of other things. So what are the few best bits given where we are going from a food system perspective that we should anchor on and tell people, you know what, these are a few best bits because they answer a few critical questions. They answer questions on environmental issues because we are degrading, especially from an African perspective, we are degrading the ecosystem pretty fast with the agricultural systems we have. So this is a good bit. From a nutrition perspective, there are two, three good bits that we can anchor on. I don't know what they are. I don't want to tell you that because I don't know. And then from a feeding people perspective, when I was in Rwanda, my maze was an interesting bet for me because it was predictable. It was something I could do and put food on the table. So what are those few things that we could do, those around farming systems, around technologies, around the knowledge that we could do and package quickly and call them a few bits. We know they are not going to be stable. We know things are going to change, but at least we are trying to stay ahead of the curve. So that would be for me number one. Number two, I talked about evidence and I will not go back to it, but information and information and information, whether it is weather-based information. Probably there's never been a bigger need for now for weather-based information or whether it is soil and soil-based information, whether it is information of what is available to deal with what challenge. So one of the challenges I bring to you is from a drought-tolerant perspective, what is there that you feel is ready that we can take to all these companies and say, you know what, even as agribusiness, just get it out, right? So I think that catalog of available technologies that can be quick bits, I think are some of the things that we can build on. And then there are tools as well. I mean, I was in a meeting on this COP28 thing and they're trying to understand what to scale. Everybody's trying to understand what to scale. And they came up with something like water harvesting. So yes, as an innovation. So yes, water harvesting has been around for hundreds of years, but when you think about moisture and how you could retain moisture longer, maybe it is an innovation in some places in the world, but also the reason they were talking about it as something that could scale is for farmers that use it, the ability to build resilience, the certainty with which definitely differentiates resilience for farmers is very clear. And that is something that they put forward as an innovation. And I was saying for a farmer in Burkina first, probably the innovation is not going to be water harvesting because they are ready to engage. Maybe the innovation is going to be how they keep moisture in the soil once they put some of that water in the ground. So anyway, so these are some of the things, but for me, the biggest thing from a food system perspective might also look at how we work together, right? If we talked about innovations and scaling innovations also from a seasonal perspective, how do we reduce the confusion in the system? How do we reduce on the level of fragmentation in the system, right? We had a meeting, one of the things we tried to do, having worked in Rwanda, and you know this Lorraine, one of the things we did well in Rwanda is coordination. We coordinate very well, we have an agricultural sector. We even tell partners where to go and where not to go. And if you're not interested in putting your money here, you can take it, it's that brand, it's very clear. We want you, you've come to Rwanda, you're a partner, you want to support a few places, your FDB go to roads, your World Bank go to energy and agriculture. Your EU go to, I don't know, social protection. So very clear, so that we really also can track progress in those areas. I think I don't know the answer, but there's a lot, there's a lot of surviving in confusion that seems to be in the system. And I think it really is something that we must find ways of fighting. So one of the areas we're working with as Agra is also understand how we can support governments to work through the confusion. I'll give you an example on drought, trying to find, advise the Ethiopian government on, is it what to scale around drought tolerance or something like that. We found that there were 11 of us, different partners that were having different solutions on different approaches, different solutions on how to advise the Ethiopian government. And the number of them were CGI institutions. Not only had we not talked to each other, but also the CGI institutions hadn't talked to each other. So the question for me becomes, why don't we find ways of coordinating better under this challenge of drought, of climate change, of scaling, because there are some solutions that we can agree on and there are some resources, there are resources that we can challenge ourselves to deploy better. I would love to be challenged by the CGI arm, somehow we deploy some of our resources. But I would also like to challenge you on where the technologies that you feel are ready to go. Why do I see, and I will say this, why do I see a rise of variety in IFPRI on a table? IFPRI, I was served the rice in IFPRI five years ago. I still haven't seen it in the field in Africa. And it's zinc, I know my colleagues in Iran, I mean probably here. This was, I was told that zinc fortified rice with all these challenges of malnutrition, that rice should be in Africa more than in a table in Washington DC, right? Where is it? I keep saying, please give it to me so I can take it out there. Anyway, those are some of the challenges. No, but that's right at the heart of actually this gathering this week around how we scale those to where it's needed. I guess thank you so much for these thoughts. Super rich. Please join me in thanking me. Thank you. Can I please ask our three panelists to come and take a seat? And we're gonna join the conversation with Agnes and myself. I'm welcoming Ms. Julian Burundji. Please come up, Mr. John Wainaina. And Dr. Thomas Parcher, please. Welcome. Ms. Burundji, why don't we start with you? Ms. Burundji is actually from the policy office at Acereka and for more than 10 years she has been engaged in agricultural research for development in Africa. And especially in analyzing policies and supporting these regional and national dialogues. So you're a seasoned process facilitator. You've organized and facilitated several high level policy dialogues on a regional basis. And so you have some insights, Julian, on the demand side of innovation perhaps from what you're hearing from the Acereka member countries at these regional dialogues. What are you hearing are the repeated critical gaps where innovation is needed for the country and region? And just to welcome all the panelists to keep your comments to five minutes or less, we want to pick everybody's brain. So I want to make sure we have time to hear everybody's insight. Over to you, Julian. Thank you, Lorraine, and good morning. So what we are hearing as a Acereka, as we move around our 15 member countries, with respect to what technologies the farmers are looking for, some of these areas. In, I'll give you a few examples from some countries. In Cameroon, the farmers are very interested in drought tolerant wheat. Still in Cameroon, the farmers are very interested in early maturing and high yielding wheat varieties. When we move away from there and get to Randa, Dr. Calibata spoke a lot passionately about the iron fortified beans and the other things that are required. So in Randa, still, the farmers are very interested in Irish potato varieties that are resistant to late blight, as well as bacterial wilt. In Kenya, where we are right now, the farmers, when we interact with them in the fields, they are very interested in drought tolerant maize varieties, and here they prefer the open pollinated varieties where they can keep planting the seed season in, season out without significant declines in the yields. Getting to Uganda, the farmers in Uganda through our interactions are interested in cassava that is resistant to the cassava brown streak disease, and here they prefer the bushy varieties. They've mentioned to us that some of the cassava varieties that you, the CG, and the NAS are developing are, they have very few, they have very few branches. So they don't cover the whole fields, and that increases the number of times that they have to weed. So they want cassava that is bushy, that covers the entire field, and there they have to weed like was, as opposed to the other varieties where they have to, that don't cover the entire field where they have to weed up to about three or four times more. In Uganda, the farmers also prefer cassava varieties that are high yielding both in terms of the roots, the root tubers, and also the stem. And this is mainly because they want to sell both the root tubers, but also the stems as planting materials. And finally still in Uganda, the farmers who are growing pumpkin are very interested in varieties that have very many seeds. And the farmers, we speak to tell us that right now it's more economically viable to sell pumpkin seeds as opposed to the fruit. For instance, one pumpkin at Farmgate could sell for about 500 to 1,000 Uganda shillings, which is about maybe 0.3 of a dollar, compared to a kilogram of pumpkin seed that could go to about 10,000 Uganda shillings, which is about maybe about 2.7 to three dollars. So there is high economic variability for the seeds compared to the fruit. And that is a change really in the market that is going to affect now the kinds of varieties that farmers need. Thank you. Because I mean, when I hear you speak, it's, you know, Dr. Kalibata was saying about your supply is important, but demand, right? And really what I'm hearing you say is sort of this feedback loop about the varieties that are being, and so once you have that information, right? And because it's a scaling week, I have to ask, you know, is Acereka also concerned with the scaling of these fed back kind of innovations emerging from its member research bodies? And if so, what are you doing about it? What are your approaches? Just briefly, and then I will. Okay. Acereka is very interested in scaling, just like all of us here. Yesterday we were talking about a community of practice for scaling. So we are very interested in scaling. And what we are doing is to support the transfer of technologies from one country to another. We believe that technologies developed in one country should be able to benefit the other countries that are not able to generate those technologies either because they don't have the resources or they don't have to reinvent the wheel because the technology already exists in another country. We've supported already, for instance, bread wheat varieties, drought tolerant wheat varieties, to move them from Sudan to Cameroon. We had, there's a very high demand for that wheat in Cameroon. We also supported the transfer of wheat varieties still from Kenya here. The Impala variety, if you've heard about it, are still moving it from Kenya here to Cameroon. The other thing that we do as Acereka is to address the barriers to the transfer of these technologies. We have the Council of Petron Ministers and this comprises the ministers responsible for agricultural research in our 15 member countries. So we are able to engage with them and advocate for policy changes, the bottlenecks, the hindrances to the transfer of these technologies across the national borders. And then what also we are able to do with respect to scaling is work through the agricultural innovation platforms. And these ones consist of all the stakeholders across the value chain for a particular commodity and we work together with them to be able to address the challenges that relate to scaling within that value chain of a particular commodity. We also facilitate cross-country learning and exchanges as well as facilitate benchmarking exercises across countries. We believe that you can only scale and promote and adopt a technology that you know. So many times we see that when we move the farmers, the private sector, the policy makers from one country to another, then we get more requests. People begin to demand for the technologies that they've seen in a certain place that they can relate to and know that these technologies will address a certain need within their countries. We also bridge the gap between the researchers and the private sector. So we convene this and bring them in one room to speak and talk about the best bet. Dr. Calibata talked about best bet technologies. So the researchers, the developers of this technology from the CG, from the NAS, discuss with the private sector about these best bet technologies. And the intention here is to trigger the demand and be able to enhance commercialization of these technologies. We broker the partnerships between the two as well. And finally, we also facilitate capacity building for the private sector. And Dr. Calibata spoke about this as well. It's very important. The private sector might want to do business, but they may not really understand, for instance, the quality requirements of the markets. What are the standards that are required? So we also enhance their capacities with respect to these standards and other quality requirements. Thank you, Julien. I think that a lot of reinforced messages are actually coming out from Dr. Calibata's intervention and what you're saying, the angle, the approaches and the, sorry, it is taking, but also what you're hearing in terms of that feedback loop in terms of that demand. And I wanted on that note actually to turn to our next guest, Mr. John Winena, who is a principal agricultural officer from the Department for Agricultural Research and Innovation from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development of the Government of Kenya. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I mean, you heard from Ms. Burundji about the kind of innovation areas that are emerging as critical. Really a lot of our resilience is what we were hearing. And at the national level, turning the same question to you, which of the government's priorities for the agri-food sector do you see as most benefiting from new ideas, new approaches, new technologies? Have there been moments when you wake up and you ask yourself, you find yourself asking, if only we had X, what would that be? Thank you. I think, thank you, thank you again. At the national level, for example, maybe the priority or focus areas that we feel, yes, I have pressed it, it's all, that we feel should be the areas of focus. First of all, I think we still remains at the level of the breeding, in terms of breeding, we are talking about the livestock breeding, we are talking about the propagation materials, the seeds and the planting materials. How do we develop technologies or innovations that will give us these propagation materials that are adaptive, especially when you take, you take the issue of the climate change? How do we have seeds or propagation materials that are drought tolerant? How do you research and give us innovations on non-propagation materials that are not just productive per se, but are also going to tackle the issue of climate change? The farmers will be asking about the drought tolerant crops, the first or the first maturing varieties and so forth. And so for the research communities, that still remains an issue of focus because you go around the country and you have a situation where, for example, in terms of potatoes, for example, you go around the country and we still have that problem. You still have a problem of access to seeds. You have the people who are breeding these seeds and I think Mad Dr. Garibata talked about this. We have the basic seeds, but the farmers still cannot access that seed. So how do we bring about innovations in terms of not just producing the basic seeds, but about multiplication and getting the seed to the farmers in the farms? So, well, fertility is another area that we need to, again, continue focusing on. How do we treat the soil? How do we help our farmers in terms of making sure that they maintain their soil fertility in Kenya? For example, we are having an issue, especially in the maize-producing areas. You understand maize is our staple food here. It's a very important crop where we have, our soils have become acidic. How do you help us in terms of innovation to turn these things around because you still need to do fertilization of these soils and yet they have become acidic in the process? How do we get out of that while still continuing to fertilize our soils? The other issue is on the ICT, I think in terms of the ICT, Communication and Technology, we are living in an ICT world and unfortunately we have all these innovations in ICT, but when you look at agriculture in crops, livestock production, we don't have much of this adaptive ICT technologies or innovations within this space. So we need this ICT information, especially I think I'm hard on the CGIR, what you are calling the dashboard. How do we get these dashboards? Not just for whatever technology or innovations are there, but our farmers can get into the creek of a battle, but how about now expanding that from production also to marketing, for example? How do we bring our farmers, our traders together, our processors together so that we remove the issue of the exploitation of our farmers that happens every so often? Issues of AI, for example, how do we continue not just researching, but also taking these innovations to our farmers, the robotics, the drones, the precision agriculture and so forth? So we still need that one to come out. Issues of adaptive agriculture, I have talked about that, and I have seen that in the new project that you have for Kano Usawa, I know that you have that aspect of adaptive agriculture, you call it conservative conservation agriculture or genetic agriculture. But when you talk about it, exactly what are you talking about? When you say you are promoting conservation agriculture, I know that you have that project, please give us data in the process of implementing that project, give us data to make that easier for us to give it to extension officers when they go there. They are confident, and because they have data that come back up when they pass all this information to their farmers. And finally, I think let's talk about food safety issues. Food safety issues and technology and innovations are out there. Post harvest issues, they are connected with their food safety issues. These innovations and technology that can help our farmers stop losing all these foods that could be used to feed our farmers. You're having a problem with feeding our people and yet, year after year, some statistics comes up, you are losing up to 30% of what we produce. It does not get to the table. So all these innovations around post harvest, around value addition can help us again tackle the issues of post harvest, dialysis and so forth is very important. You have asked me if I was to say, what if we had acted differently in the past? And I think the first thing that will come to my mind is the issue of research, extension liason. I think you are not doing very well. Research, extension liason. How do you bring the two together? And we have not done that very well. I think it is an issue that we need to strengthen. The list of agriculture, like we have said, has established now a research and innovation as a full department from the crops department. And they are already taking up that issue so that you bring in the farmers, you bring in the researchers and also the development partners so that at the very beginning, when you are setting the agenda for research, who sets the agenda, for example, for research? When you are doing research, maybe at whichever CGR institutions that you are talking about, who set that agenda? The more often are not to be imposed from outside. Do you involve the farmers? Do you involve the counties of the local governments? Do you involve the extension officers who are in the end supposed to bring these innovations to the farmers who are the actual practitioners and so forth? So if we've done it differently, I think we can strengthen this liason. And I know that that is an intervention that is incoming to come up with a platform to be doing that. Then there is the issues of food and food safety. I think it's an issue. We have the food and food safety coordination bill. We are hoping that it can be fast-tracked because it is becoming an issue. Workout across this country, we do look for food safety standards when we are growing crops for exports, when we are growing crops for the local market, we don't put emphasis on food and food safety. So yes, it's a field, it's an area that we can do better. Thank you. No, thank you. Because the point that you were making about the alliance between extension and research, speaking directly to this feedback loop that Julian was referring to, but you're also the second person to sort of issue this call for a menu of solutions. I'm very, very well aware of the menu of challenges that are facing and the need to have those solutions delivered in really full information kind of ways because after all, it is the national minister of agriculture that sort of understands what those conditions are and what adaptations are needed to be. So full information calls. I really thank you for sort of flagging those two points. I'm turning now to Dr. Thomas Perture from GIZ. He is leading the GIZ-CGIR task force on scaling. And so I have a kind of flash question, okay? Yeah. What this task force is all about exactly this. GIZ has been in fact showing some foresight in dedicating its early support to scaling. Scaling is a dedicated activity, I mean. So you've heard from your fellow panelists where the priorities are in terms of scaling, where the challenges are, et cetera, et cetera. Given GIZ support to the CGIR on scaling, what would success look like? Give us a flash, 10 years from now, what would success look like for the task force on CGIR scaling? Thank you. It is really interesting to listen to my fellow panelists. Can you go closer to them? Yeah, thanks. It's really interesting to listen to the ideas and approaches of my fellow panelists on how to address scaling. But also really interesting to have very specific demands already and interest in innovations and technology from CGIR. And I think that indicates us the way to success for scaling. To engage with these partners, learn about demands, and jointly address these demands. In the GIZ Fund International Agricultural Research, we act on behalf of our ministry for economic development and cooperation. And having that perspective, our focus is on creating impact from research. So that reflected also how we design programs in the FIA project. Programs for a longer time, our bilateral programs had a specific component on scaling. And also, we FIA designed the task force on scaling to fill that gap of having staff profiles that act as a broker in the system to bring technologies from a research environment into broad-scale use. So these initiatives all aim to create impact. And over the years, over now, seven years of existence of the task force, our views and ways to address scaling have also changed. It started with simply reaching more users with an innovation. And we move towards seeing, I'm scaling as an interactive process, as a systemic process to develop a scaling approaches that are responsible, that are socially inclusive. And we also aim to create a better understanding of scaling and to open a discussion on what scaling is and should be about. And looking at this meeting now, it's really nice to see that scaling has made it on top of the agenda of CGR. And that is addressed, that there's a joint program for innovation portfolio management that is addressed across CGR initiatives. It's also great to see that community of practice emerging, people who are addressing scaling from different angles, but find themselves and identify themselves as this committee of practice. I see that already as a big success in scaling in CGR. But then looking forward, you mentioned 10 years forward, I see scaling as a means to an end from our perspective. It's there to address development goals. And the German perspective, we are informed by our development policies with two policies. One is the transformation of every food system. And the second one is the feminist development policy. Both of them are in line with international development objectives that are addressed in the CGR portfolio. But now you're looking at food system transformation towards being more sustainable, being more resilient, being more inclusive, that's a big task. And addressing this, CGR is in a good position to address this task. But CGR, I cannot do that alone. It requires a larger innovation ecosystem to address that. And looking at the future, I do see a prominent role for that in CGR. And I would see CGR in a position to engage with these larger ecosystems, to engage with actors on different levels, actors from different sectors to tackle that issue of transforming food systems. And in that, CGR playing out its capacities and its comparative advantages to contribute to that process together with other actors in that innovation ecosystem. Thank you. Thank you so much. Now, I just want to point out that we started a little late so we're actually not late, we're right on time. But we haven't given anybody a chance to ask anything. So I'm just looking at Edo. Can we take a couple of questions? That would be great from the audience. Okay, so then please, you have heard from our esteemed panel. Any questions that have arisen that you're burning to ask and we will, yes, please identify yourself first, keep your questions brief and we'll collect a few if there are a few, over to you. Okay, thank you so much. My name is Milion. I'm a social scientist at Ilri. Thank you so much, Dr. Calibata for the inspiring interventions. I just want to ask one of the things I see, partly part, because I'm from Ilri, is the seed systems interventions in Africa tend to focus on cereal crops. We tend to forget legumes, forage crops, vegetables, forest seeds. How do you think agra, probably together with the CG centers, diversify the portfolio of interventions in improving seed systems in general than a focus in cereal crops only? Thank you. Thank you, Milion. Anybody else? Yes, please. Hi. My name is Mandla. I'm with the Excellence in Agronomy Initiative. I think the first comment for me is that it's quite interesting that a lot of the examples that were given this morning are focusing on seed and seed systems. And yet there is a big case to be made that some of the transformation that we really require requires farmers to do practices in a different way, once they receive the good seed. And this is really to Dr. Calibata. How do you think we could do a better job of really channeling good agronomic practices to the farmers who now have received this good seed so that they can sustain the productivity that the seed offers? Because we've tried digital solutions, we've tried printable guides. We're still not quite getting to where we need to. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll take one more. Jules. Hi, thanks so much. My name is Jules from the Portfolio Performance Unit. So solutions, we don't have all of the solutions. It's multi-level. It's structural, regional, national, local. And so within that complicated construct, what are the best bets for CGIR? How do we manage upwards and outwards in the best way possible to make the biggest impact in this space? Thanks. Okay, so why don't we turn to the panelists? I think we'll direct that first question to Asareka and then the second one to Agnes and then the third to Mr. Wangaina. So Agnes, excellence in agronomy question. So we focused, by virtue of having to focus on something, on feed systems, yet he's saying the transformation we need really is at the farmer level in terms of agronomic practices. What are your thoughts? Is this, yeah, this is on, yeah? So I think that there was that part also of diversification and, yeah. And I know others will answer it, but I just wanted to go back to that. I think if we just recognize the beauty that lies within diversification, I mean, I keep saying that Africa survived the Russia-Ukraine crisis because we are a very diverse continent that has so much diversity in terms of food security. If we depended significantly on wheat, we would definitely be struggling and we don't produce much. So there are opportunities in there. Agro has worked with how many, I think close to 26 different crops. And again, most of this is demand-driven, but the opportunity to work together and move things that, again, we look up to you as the CGR, things that you think make the most sense where the last meeting we had with the Kenyan president before Kenyatta, before he left office, he was, I really need us to stop focusing on a maze as Kenya. That's demand. He said, what happened to millet? And we passed that demand over to you all. Where is millet here? So immediately I had that question. I said, the CGR must have an answer. So I think it's one of those, like you sing from a Syrika. When you hear these things from the field, what do we do and how quickly do we respond? There's an opportunity now, right now, to jump on the diversification question that is coming on board, to address nutrition, to address climate change, to address resilience. There's an opportunity for all of us to do better. We welcome any ideas you might have there. In terms of good agronomic practices and how to get farmers to do more with good agronomic practices, that's the reason I said, if not a green revolution, then what? And I'll go back to that for just one simple reason. We, when I go to a farmer and I tell them, you're growing this variety of maize, you're growing it like this, you're using these fertilizers, that was catching up, right? That was catching up, at least for the farmers we work with, we're seeing what? Close to 48% adoption on average, across 11 countries, and I'm sure you have better numbers, that was catching up. But now what? What are we going to tell them? We're going to tell them it's regenerative agriculture and what do you do within regenerative agriculture? And when they start doing that, what's the ecosystem that supports that? When they start doing agroecology in Nigeria, we are doing soybean and maize together, not in inter-crop strips, and it's giving good results. So what is the system? What's the knowledge base for that? What the documentation that supports that and pushes it into the system? And what is the support ecosystem for that? And the support ecosystem is extremely important. I don't have to produce residues to apply residues. I should be able to find residues somewhere, right? So just like I'm able to buy fertilizers from somewhere or be able to buy seed from somewhere. So I think also being going beyond and not look at the farmers, the person who's beginning to, who's going to do all these things, but understand that the farmer has to survive in a ecosystem that works, in the business that works. So I honestly think that farmers are not opposed to taking on different agronomic practices. We had the 77% uptake of different agronomic practices with farmers we work with. If they had extension, the thing is, and you know this, the thing is, demonstrate the value, demonstrate the source, the opportunity, and the value for money. Why would I do it as a farmer, you know? Anyway, so for me, those are, I don't think it's complicated. I just think that incentives have to line up. That's a good point. Julien, what did you wanna add on this focus on cereal crops and the desire for greater diversification? How does that resonate? I think the CG should be open. We discussed yesterday during our group sessions about the importance of feedback. It may not be as active right now within the one CG, but this is an area that needs to be improved and you don't have to do it yourselves. You work through partners. Dr. Inga just presented in the morning, whatever was achieved last year was done, achieved using like about 941 partners. Through partnerships, you're able to do so much. So if you're not able to manage the feedback yourselves, you can do it through partners. Let's have feedback on these technologies that you're developing. Once they go out there, what is happening to them? What are the end users, what are the users of this technology? Are they evolving? Are they even, are some of them different from what you even intended in the first place? Is it what people need on the ground? Do they want to diversify and then you're promoting probably a very specific technology? Do they want to inter-crop? Do they want to grow using strips that we just had Dr. Calibata speak about? Let's get a way of having a mechanism for feedback and listen to the demands. These people that we are all working for, the farmers, the private sector, the governments, at the end of the day, we want to improve livelihoods. We want to ensure that policies work for people. We want to see transformation. So let's listen to them. What do they want? And let's also give feedback. What have we done? If these demands are coming, what have we done about them? Can we be accountable to each other and say we are not able to do all this? But we took a step. This is what we were able to do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Julian. Mr. Ronana, you had spoken about managing knowledge, accessing knowledge, having menus of solutions, et cetera. One question from the audience was, how can we as a CG manage better that which we generate to meet your needs? Thank you very much. And I think we have to go back to the basics. I think I talked about that layers of that partnership and collaboration. We need that kind of framework between the CGIR, the local government and the national government where we can, the private sector and even the pharma group so that we can have a dialogue. We can listen to each other the same way now we are dialoguing here. It is very important. And I think I have already said that that mechanism is already being put in place where we have at least some framework where we do not meet when there is an event like this when we have scheduled meetings. We have regular meetings with each other so that we can have an one-on-one talk. The government is also implementing what they are calling a one-word, one-corporative model where everyone is now going to have one-corporative society where all the pharma supposed to be members. That makes it easier for you now to get to these pharmas, to get to these groups, to get to these pharma associations so that you can pass your message, you can pass your innovations, but also you can listen from them. What would they want you to research on what are the innovations that they require? So it's that collaboration and partnership framework that I hope we will be able to implement. Thank you. I can assure you we're taking notes. Thank you very much. I'm going to pass immediately to Dr. Maya Rajasekaran, Senior Director for Integrated Systems and Scaling for the CG, to reflect a bit from the CG and to thank this amazing panel on our behalf for all that you have shared today. So Dr. Maya, if you could come. Can I ask a question? No, I mean, I'm here, so I just want to use the opportunity. I just feel, honestly, I feel like there's a whole lot of pressure and expectation on the CGR. Which is going to be driven and going to get even higher and higher driven by all these challenges that we face. And then the rate at which knowledge is being eroded and the need to build new knowledge very fast and new materials and new technologies very fast. So I just wonder whether you do feel that and how you're going to prioritize to deal with this challenge. Thank you. First, thank you so much for the invitation and both of you being here. I want to start with thanking the panel, Dr. Kalibata, for very excellent input and also bringing that reality from your experience from the ministry to being a minister and also building on the CGR experience and also challenging us to think about the expectations are pretty high. And I think it's a good challenge that CG is ready to take that on board and also being really grounded in saying that what are the key priorities moving forward. So thank you so much for all the great input and many of us have been taking a lot of notes. And thank you also for the rest of the panel members for being very specific input on what the scaling community of this community should be taking forward and all the broader CGR community. Let me first say that I think the first thing what this team need to be already already doing is actually listening. I know that's the first thing that we are actively doing as in a broader scaling framework. We are listening, what are the needs from our key partners, from governments to funding partners and to regional partners and organizations like Agra who has a very specific strategy on scaling agriculture transformation in Africa. So I think that is, and again, thank you for the team to bring this broader group together if I understood correctly. This is the second time this group is coming together. Mark told me that the first time there were very few people so the community is becoming bigger. So I think that the scaling and the need for really hitting the numbers and in terms of delivering the impact is very clear. I just want to not summarize it at least reflect on some of the key points that I heard from the panel members. We are starting from what wakes up every day is the same. We all want to deliver impact and meaningful impact to farmers and other stakeholders in the food system. And so we have a shared vision, so very solid ground that we all can build on. The other is shared accountability. We are funding partners here so keeping us all of us accountable for the investments they are doing it. So we have a strong platform of shared accountability and the shared vision that takes us forward but in that journey, we all have very specific different roles into it and how we did really build on that. Some of the key comments that I heard, at least I have just scribbled down in my notice, incentives, right? How do you really bring the incentives forward because our actions are often driven by our own incentives? So as human being, our behavior is becoming very important. So really paying specific attention to incentive for farmers and the public and the private sector for sustainability. Adna, Dr. Kalibata mentioned that. How do we really make sure that some of the investments made is taken forward? How do we make it sustainable for private sector to keep that investment and their investment in our without stakeholders? The second is about working with the National Agriculture Research Organization and national programs in general. How can we empower them even better? How do we build a capacity even better? So this is a common thread that cuts across most of our thinking but I think the message is clear that we just need to do more of that. We are doing it but I think we need to have a huge opportunity to do it much better in a more systematic way and also kind of having, how do we make that feedback loop more regular? And then I think there's a mechanism that we need to build in and we need to kind of sustain that. And the weakest link. There's weakest link and I think the success of our depends upon how do we identify that weakest link and how do we address that weakest link and how do we strengthen that particular particular. So that's a collective challenge for all of us move forward. You know, a colleague from Acereka and then our national, from Kenyan government, we had some very specific opportunities for scaling very much around seed systems and I think these are very valid comments like this is what you're hearing from farmers. So very specific around drought tolerance, how do we take that forward? And from the national government, and I think critical link about how do we build the link between the research and the extension in extension in many countries are very weak. So there's a massive lift that we as a community has to do in terms of building that extension network with the help of digital technologies and how do we scale that forward? So again, a beautiful opportunity and a big challenge to really work on. And thank you for Jai said for being kind of championing the thinking within CGIR in terms of really driving that scaling, thinking forward. And I like very much what you said about, you know, thinking has also evolved, it's a process and there's a lot of learning in that scaling process. It's not a linear process. It's not just taking any innovation to a particular stakeholder, but rather it's a continuous learning to be done and it's also about how do we bring different innovations together. So there's a lot of rich, you know, input that CGIR has heard from this panel and we take it to the heart and really thinking about, you know, how can we, yeah, how can we actually, in our adaptive learning and management practices and in our programs also, how do we really embed those learning into the program as we move forward? I want to have three points that I think is mentioned from a CGIR perspective. This is a collective opportunity. So this is a listening opportunity and that will be co-creating something. Good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, depending on where you're watching. Please be advised. That's okay, that's okay. That's fine, yeah. Okay, no worries, no worries about that. So I just want to kind of zoom in on three major points that the panel, in fact, in partly answered and also some of the questions that came up from the participants here. One is about purposeful partnership and within the broader framing of scaling specifically. So that's what exactly happening here. So CGIR as a community is really actively thinking about how do we do that more purposefully. It's not any partnership. We know that we have complementary roles to play. So and that, and in that purposeful partnership, the role of CGIR also came up very clear from the panel intersections and they said, the evidence, we need evidence that is in a digestible format that how can we speak to the ministries and the ministers who are actively looking for it. And so there's a convincing to be done for big investment to be made at countries and at regionals already. CGIR's role as a building that evidence is very, very clear. I think we need to do that much more bundled way so that it's not looking at one specific innovation, but how can we do good seats in a great drought tolerant varieties? How can we combine that with better agronomic practices and how do we combine those two with information on climate services? So that would be a greater bundling of innovations and integrated solutions that we should be looking at. So great opportunity for. And I would also say that CGIR strategy or 2030 strategy that in the morning session mentioned is a response to interconnected challenges calling for integrated solutions. So the direction that we are all looking is actually how do we get into that integrated solution? And it's a challenge. And I think we need to integrate is like emphasize a great example, like, you know, we all use emphasis, but there was an innovation not coming from telephone, but it's from information. And so how do we connect to different banking systems? So this once that innovation come together, then beautifully it works for everybody. So how do we bring that integrated solution in a very much more purposeful way? Also a very prioritized way because there are so many innovation and maybe it's a good challenge for you in a Jules and team to really think about how do we kind of communicate that also that, you know, with the team thinking about how do we integrate different solutions and communicate further on that. The second aspect of CGIR is about Dr. Kalibata mentioned on the coordination. Of course there's changes happening all the time. We are all in that changing space within the national system, regional system, within the CGIR system. And that does a lot to grapple and get our heads around. And Uckamo Stavi as an example, as a vision forward and vision that we are building is in the CGIR initiative is to really regional initiative playing that coordinating role for the CGIR bringing innovation which is contextualized innovation in a particular country or region and regional initiative like Uckamo Stavi playing that coordinating role, integrative role in bringing CGIR innovation from different centers and different disciplines and different science action areas. So that's a vision that we are building and it goes beyond the east and southern Africa. It really goes to the other five regional initiative that Joseph I think in the morning has mentioned. So there's a lot of work for us and we have been thinking and listening very carefully and how do we become complimentary to the other programs around. I will be very brief. There's one more point I know. I won't keep anybody between myself and lunch. The other is about learning. The learning is also there's an opportunity as we learn is a process, we have to also document some of this learning move forward. So CGIR also can be doing a very neutral broker role in terms of documenting that learning forward. So kind of really very strong in building that evidence forward and building, providing that evidence. The second is really on the bundling, the different innovation. It needs to speak to the integrated challenges that farming systems are placing. So climate adaptations and the seed and the agronomic service all need to come together. The third on the coordination. Yes, there is an important challenge and Inga and others are very much aware and I think we are very much doubling down on that one. And on the learning. And I think there will be learning much more from our own, you know, as a group here. And I think it's important to document some of those learning forward so that we don't want to make mistakes. At least, you know, fail fast and forward. So we have to just document and making sure our path forward is here. So I would just say that there's a great, this is a phenomenal opportunity for us to build our CGIR in general to kind of build our vision forward for what we can do for integrative scaling to address different challenges in Africa and East Africa in this particular focus is very much on the East and Southern Africa. And we cannot do that without Agra, Asareka, the national government and the funding partners. So I think it's like very, very clear complementary role that CGIR brings to it. And I just want to say thank you to Lorraine and also for asking for great questions to the panelists. And thank you for this opportunity. Okay, so I'd like to again just thank all our panelists and also please join me in thanking Lorraine who did such a great job in pulling this session together. Okay, so it's my pleasure to actually stand between you all in lunch. But we do want to recognize that we have another very exciting session to go before lunch. So people are saying this to me, what does that mean? There are three announcement Agnes will make them later. Yeah, but first we will launch the scaling fund. So there'll be three announcement that's one of them that we'll follow later. I want to also acknowledge and thank journalists who are dialing in from half a dozen countries across the continent. So thank you for being with us and thank you for bearing with us. We just had a very exciting session with an illustrious panel. So we may be a few minutes later than we had intended but you are most welcome and we're delighted to have you with you. So on behalf of Inga and myself and the rest of the Ucama-Ustawi team, I'd like to take a few minutes and launch our scaling fund. So what is the background to this, to the scaling fund? Thanks to an additional investment in Ucama-Ustawi which we hope in a few weeks we'll be able to share more widely. We are launching a scaling fund alongside a few other activities that we are adding on. This is really meant to empower Ucama-Ustawi in its role as a regional integrative initiative. And in doing so by allowing it to pull in innovations throughout the CG landscape. So from other initiatives and also working with other partners from both the public and the private sectors. And it builds on past experiences that we've had in previous years in the CRP era, notably in the Roots, Tubers and Bananas CRP of similar type. So what is this scaling fund? Well, it is a mechanism