 Hi, good afternoon, everyone. We're all gabbing out in the hallway, so we probably better get started here. Welcome to CSIS. I'm Johanna Neseth. I'm Vice President for Strategic Planning here, and I head up our work on food security. And we're here today to release a new report that we've put out. It's taken us some time and research to put this together. But we're really looking at the question of scientific partnerships on agriculture between Africa and the United States. This is an area we've had a long legacy of partnership, intense deep engagement. We've got this fantastic story of scientists throughout Africa who've been trained at US land grant universities and American ag scientists in universities who have done a lot of work internationally, but we knew that this had faded considerably. And we wanted to take a look at some of the ways that we could enhance engagement. At the time we put this study together, Feed the Future was getting started and was going to be really looking and focusing at this. We're very fortunate to be joined by a number of people here today. I think you all know that unfortunately, Colesus Juma could not make it today due to an emergency, but we've got a lot to talk about anyway. I want to start by introducing Bill Garvelink. Ambassador Garvelink is a senior advisor with CSIS. He is with us working on our food security and development work. He actually helped to stand up Feed the Future. Spent a lot of time talking with ag ministers in Africa, and as he and I have talked over the time that he's been with us, he just talks about how many conversations he had with ag ministers saying, I'm kind of the last of my breed. I was trained at Purdue or at Michigan, but there aren't a lot more scientists who are being trained. Hi, Jen. So I wanted to ask him to open up with a few comments and reflections on what he has seen and heard as he's been talking with folks, and then turn it over to Max Engerholzer from the Lansbury Foundation. Come on up, Bill. Thank you all. It's a pleasure to be here, and I was noticing we were talking about setting up Feed the Future. David Road is here somewhere who was actually the brains behind most of that as we set up a bureau in AID. But I'd like to just talk for a couple of minutes about Feed the Future and where it's going and how it relates to research and that sort of thing. And it's one of the most interesting initiatives underway in the US government right now, and it's President Obama's Feed the Future, Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative. And it's really an effort to reduce hunger, reduce rural poverty and malnutrition in developing world. And the initiative builds on a host country commitment and leadership, which is a requirement of the initiative, and then it focuses on smallholder agriculture with a special emphasis on women and girls and on nutrition. For this initiative to be most effective, it must be anchored in Africa-relevant agricultural research and it has to be lashed up with universities and the private sector. We all know that serial production has to be increased by 70% in the coming years worldwide. In Africa, agricultural serial production has to double and we also all know that there's going to be less land and less water to do that. So it's going to be a rather difficult exercise and to accomplish this, we really have to revitalize our focus on agricultural science and technology. But it must be agricultural science and technology that is useful and appropriate to Africa. In 2010 and 2011, as Johanna mentioned, I traveled around to a lot of the countries in Africa that are priority countries to feed the future initiative and spoke with heads of state and ministers of agriculture. And as I did that, they reflected on the scientific exchanges between Africans and Americans and the educational opportunities at US institutions. And they pointed out how important that was in the agricultural development of their country. They also lamented the fact that that has all dried up and we really don't do that sort of thing anymore. And as Johanna mentioned, I spoke to one minister and a minister of agriculture and he pointed out he was the last agricultural scientist in the government trained by the United States. And that's a sad state of affairs, I think. But thank for us. And in meeting with these ministers, we talked a lot about the scientific exchanges and the graduate level training. And that has to be in their minds renewed and reactivated but in a little bit of a different way. The leaders emphasize that the training must be more closely linked to African country needs. And the students should do some or all of their research, not in the United States but in their home countries. And the ministers really stress that the programs have to be designed to meet the needs of local farmers and the requirements of national and international private sectors. Which is something that a lot of the training that has gone on in years past has trained folks to deal with UN agencies and those sort of organizations. And I think now the training has to focus on the needs of the private sector, which are different than working with the multilateral organizations. And this report here reflects the thinking of the African leaders, certainly the ones I've talked to. And it sets out a roadmap to greater scientific engagement on African agriculture between Africans and Americans, scientists, universities and our private sectors together. And I think if you look at this report along with the Feed the Future research initiative strategy that has been put together, it's a pretty good companion piece for how we should proceed here. And so if you haven't, I recommend this to you. And with that, I will turn it back to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bill. It's been great to have you here and have your eye on this as we go through. And I know you have to head to Louisiana shortly, so we'll let you go. I want to turn next to Max Angerholzer. Max is sort of an old, old friend of mine and of CSIS. He's someone who's been with us for 10 or 12 years now. He currently is the executive director of the Richard Lownsbury Foundation, which is a foundation that really focuses on the role of science and policy. Got a strong emphasis on scientific diplomacy. And he actually came to me a while ago and said, you know, we really want to do something looking at scientific diplomacy in Africa. What do you think, what would make sense? And I said, you have to talk about agriculture. That is where the U.S. government is really placing its emphasis in terms of scientific engagement. And there's a real opportunity to talk about this and to explore it. So I want to invite Max to say a few words, talk about your sort of theory and philosophy on scientific diplomacy and how we got into this together. Thank you, Johanna. And I think you covered basically everything I wanted to talk about so I could sit back down. But again, I'm Max Angerholzer. I'm the Executive Director of the Richard Lownsbury Foundation. As Johanna mentioned, we have partnered with CSIS for many years. So I'm very happy to be here today and I'm glad to see so many people in this room. The Lownsbury Foundation, as Johanna said, we're a small foundation. We're modest by foundation size. We give in science, policy, education and research. And I think based on our long-term commitment to international science, a few years ago we tried to move into the area of science diplomacy. And being the small foundation that we are, we try to practice venture philanthropy when we can. And so I would describe that as trying to find new, exciting opportunities and initiatives, give these programs seed money with the hope that that'll grow into something new, exciting, and long-lasting. And I think science diplomacy is an area where that's certainly taken place in the last decade. The foundation has been active in countries in the last few years, such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Burma, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, India, Pakistan, North Korea even. And so I think for us, we really believe that science is a universal language. And even if these diplomatic barriers exist, and sometimes, especially when they're high, there is an avenue, there is a reason for cooperation and discussion through science. And I think taking a historical approach to it, a lot of this took place during the Cold War between Soviet bloc scientists and American scientists, and also with Chinese scientists before Kissinger and Nixon opened up China. And so I think we feel that even when diplomacy is not strong, and there are these hurdles that if you can build these relationships through science, education, engineering, that these are pathways, these are relationships that can be scaled up if diplomacy comes to bear and if the relationship improves. And so I think in some of these countries I mentioned, that's our hope. I think with Africa, I'm especially excited to be here because as Johanna mentioned, I feel like that's an area of great opportunity. I think the US should be doing more in Africa and I think especially in an area like science and in agriculture, that's a strength of ours that we can bring to bear. I think as far as our foreign policy goes, I feel strongly that science and education, engineering, these are arrows of our foreign policy quiver that we don't take good enough advantage of. And I think, especially with what we've been doing abroad in recent years and we're overstretched in certain ways, I think this is an area of our diplomacy where we could be doing a lot more. We are certainly not the only group doing this. There are other great foundations like the Carnegie Corporation, the Luce Foundation, Plow Shares that are involved in this area. Fortunately, they have deeper pockets than we do so they can have more effect. And CSIS, I would say, has been a leader in the area of science, diplomacy, international cooperation. There are other groups like the National Academies and AAAS that are doing that too, but CSIS is definitely a leader. I'm happy to be here today. I'm especially excited with how the report turned out. I know the Lowndesbury Foundation is pleased to be a part of that. So thank you, Joanna. Well, thank you so much, Max and Bill. Now I wanna turn to these two great panelists. We have three women here. And I will say we had hoped to have an African scientist with us and with Dr. Juma being unavailable the last minute, we couldn't find a replacement, but we did, one of Max's requests was please try to have as much scientist to scientist discussion as you can. So we really tried to do that in our working groups. And I can explain sort of how those rolled out. Let me first introduce Jennifer Cook, who heads up our Africa program at CSIS. She's been with us for about 12 years. We both started in early 2000, as it turns out, and has really been a great partner in understanding what the systems are in African universities, in the science community, and has done quite a bit of research in this area. Julie Howard is a longtime friend and mentor and expert who could have written this report herself, but she's busy implementing. So we're really pleased to have her here. She's the chief scientist at USAID looking at food security and the Bureau of Food Security, looking at Feed the Future and has been conducting a wide-ranging effort to really produce and put together a strong focused research agenda for Feed the Future. Which is gonna talk about that today. I'll just give a few comments about the report. And then I'm gonna turn to Jennifer to give some background and then I will go back and share some specific comments about what we're actually saying. And then we're gonna have Julie kind of do the wrap up and really take us into what Feed the Future is doing. So first I wanna note, there are a couple people who helped on this report considerably, Kristen Wedding, who's not here because her baby was sick today. Anna Appelfield, far hot to hear. And then Richard Downey, also with our Africa program. All were very engaged in the discussions and thinking about what should we really say based on our interviews and conversations. We really set out to kind of look at this question of where is the scientific cooperation been? Why is it faded? Is it gonna come back? Could we go forward and say, yeah, we should really re-energize this habit of having African scientists study in the US, get doctorates, do their research? We didn't know what we'd come out with and we definitely came away thinking that's probably not the best way to go. But we really wanted to uncover some new paths. We wanted to look at how the private sector is influencing the way agriculture is developing. What are extension systems looking like? What is this web of research institutions in different countries doing in terms of cohesion of a research program? Feed the Future really emphasizes demand-driven efforts. So as a country lays out its agricultural plan, what does that mean for the CGIR Institute in the country, for the national research system, for the universities, for the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Education? All of these groups have some role to play in this field, but how is that actually shaping up? So we really set out to kind of answer these questions and come up with some thinking on that that is reflected in the report. So Jen, if you could please take us through. We came to the questions that we put together in the beginning of the study. We're really based in large part on some work that Jennifer and Richard had done. Some field studies looking at the state of the conversation on genetically modified food in a couple of African countries. In their research, they really found a lot of fractures within the debate around science and agriculture in these countries. And that was really the genesis of how we started to think about the issue. So maybe you can share some more. Sure. Yeah, I thought, I'd start a little bit. I mean, Johanna has led the Global Food Security Project here and really a number of reports have looked at food security from a variety of angles. And obviously there's a huge amount of, huge number of issues that have to be addressed to bolster agriculture productivity and effective distribution in the developing world. I mean, we talk about infrastructural deficits, the predominance particularly in Africa of small scale versus large scale, shortage of inputs, trade barriers, and I think very importantly, national agricultural policies that really stymie farmer incentives in many ways. And all of these are gonna be critically important to overcome in the short term to kind of unleash economic potential. But when you look longer term, when you look at the need to double global food productivity in the next 50 years to meet demand, if you're in the face of soil depletion, water scarcity, pests and disease, climate variability and climate change, you really are gonna have to look increasingly to science, technology, and innovation to drive significant growth in productivity. So advances in agricultural research, obviously that prioritizes productivity, have resulted in major yield increases in the Americans in America's in Asia, but this revolution largely passed Africa by between 1976 and 1996, spending on agricultural research in sub-Saharan Africa increased by just 1.5% compared with almost 5% in the rest of the developing world. And in fact, as we saw important investments that were being made in African agricultural research in the 60s and 70s, this is by African governments themselves, by the international community, and by the United States have really declined over time. Many of those important partnership with it. So now there's a generation of really stellar African scientists and agronomists who are in leading positions in many African research institutions, but what you don't see is the next generation of a kind of a robust crop of young scientists coming up through the ranks to fill their shoes. And this is at a time that science is becoming much more complex and the need for science and innovation, as I said, is gonna be much more demanding. So the question becomes, how do you insert agricultural research more firmly into the food security agenda? I know there's an opportunity here because there isn't attention to this, and it's not just ag research for the sake of research, just ag research really nilly, but research that prioritizes pragmatism, impact, and localized relevance that builds the science and research establishment within African countries so that they can communicate credibly and consistently, I think, with their governments, with the public, and with farmers themselves. And at the same time, building the next generation of scientist research innovators. So one of the problems is this isn't a quick fix idea, and I think one of the reasons that agriculture, these kinds of investment have dwindled over time is because the US has moved to more of a need for quick impact projects, and educating a cadre of scientists and researchers for the long haul is not a quick fix. The senior agronomists that you see in African institutions right now were trained 15, 20 years ago, and they're now kind of at the peak of their careers. You know, we are gonna have a gap, and I think looking ahead, you really have to start now to build those capacities. The big partnerships with the United States and USID kind of have withered, dwindled dramatically. We used to train a significant amount of researchers generally, but agricultural researchers, particularly here in the United States. The training model of bringing them here to land-grant universities generally was very expensive, and often more focused on US agricultural priorities, the localized priorities of that particular university. CGIAR, there's some concern that it was moving away somewhat from a demand-driven model and research areas to areas that were of more interest to the developed than the developing world. I think there's a significant rethink within that system to move back to demand-driven research. And then within African countries, a move away from investments in research and development overall to kind of the priorities, you know, the more immediate priorities, and proportionally, very little of public spending on research in Africa, remarkably, just 4% of overall spending by African governments on research and development goes to agriculture and research. So I think as we think of what is it that the United States and international community can do, we also have to be thinking very hard of how do you mobilize African governments themselves to make this much more of a priority. So we brought together with the support of the Lowndesbury Foundation, really just an excellent group of development expertise, agricultural extension specialists, the private, public, and international arenas, and looking at three specific questions. I'm not gonna go into great detail on the findings. It's a very dense report, I think in some, I mean, readable, but dense. Well written. Very well written. Excellent process. But it looked at really at the three specific questions, the current state of agricultural science and research in Africa, how these various research establishments can be supported and coordinate priorities and opportunities. Obviously big human capacity gaps, institutional gaps in many countries, although there are some centers, real centers of excellence that it may be worth kind of investing in. Under investment, as I said, by the governments themselves, a lack of political support. And I think that's becomes a vicious circle because there's not a community to kind of champion the idea. And so the science as an investment area priority gets kind of marginalized within budgetary debates. And often, very often, lack of a national research strategy that can guide a kind of pragmatic, relevant research. There are a lot of players involved in this. They're the national research centers, which are oftentimes kind of where the great magnet for the science capacity of a particular country. And some of them are really, truly excellent. You have universities, and I would say within the research agenda in Africa, research establishment in Africa, universities are generally the very weak link. And I think that's universities, since I would say the structural adjustment of the 1980s have been really corroded from within oftentimes, and we've heard this in many conversations in Zambia, Kenya, elsewhere, they've become more kind of training or extended high school, people would say, where it's just teaching rather than the real hard research that's connected to anything. Some of the research that's done is fairly abstract. It's not really feeding into what the national research centers are doing, what the local immediate priorities might be, or any kind of a national research agenda. So one of the big challenges is how do you get universities, which are after all the feeding pool for the next generation of scientists, much more mobilized, capacitated and connected with kind of the real priorities of the country at hand. And the report outlines maybe some new models rather than the old model of bringing researchers here to American universities. And I think Johanna will talk a little bit about the conclusions on that. New players include the foundations are playing in a big way, and particularly the Agra Initiative, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, bringing new resources to bear. Now, is it done within a national research agenda? This is a question that occurs in health as well. When you have big donor foundations, are they who are doing brilliant innovative work often, but are they aligned with kind of what a national research agenda might look like? I think there are efforts to kind of bring a more strategic coordinated approach. And the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Program, CADEP, is one effort to do this. It sets standards and kind of best practices for bringing integration among these many players and kind of creating kind of a strategic vision on research. But I think it's how its implement is extremely uneven within Africa. And as I said, there's some exceptional universities, but there's a long way to go there as well. Current state of agricultural research universities, how can they improve the capacities and ties with other research centers? I've talked a little bit about that. What are the new kinds of partnerships that we might bring to train both individuals, students, professors, create institutional linkages. And then finally, what role for the private sector? I think there's huge untapped potential there. Overall, their investments have been fairly small in agricultural research, but there are a couple of very significant high impact contributions. And what can they bring in terms of sustainable capacity that they leave behind in terms of technologies, capacities, partnerships for the long run, and how, again, do they fit into a national research strategy? I'm gonna end there, but in terms of the diplomacy side, I mean, I think one of the, this is being true in health, it's been true in a number of other areas. There's only so much that the international community can insist upon within a particular country. And I think more and more, particularly as we're looking at major fiscal constraints here, the expectation is gonna be that African governments themselves take this more and more in hand. And if they want it to be a priority, we can support them in that. But it's gonna be very hard to force this as a priority on them. And so building the demand for it within African countries for research capacity that's relevant, I think that's gonna be a big challenge for diplomacy and implementers as well. So I think Joanne is gonna talk a little bit about some of the new models that people came up with to strengthen these kind of partnerships across these institutions. Thanks Jennifer, that's a great background and really good, good context for where things stand. And I think, I'm amazed, we have like a hundred people here today, which is amazing because ag research is not the sexiest topic in foreign policy and security circles. So yeah, we're finding ways to make it sexy. So after we, and this is a 25 page study, it only scratches the surface. There's enormous complexity and there's just all kinds of details we could have gotten into that we didn't. So we wanna just put it out as a framing document. But I think in all of our conversations, the idea that really came forward overall was that we face a massive challenge over the next 30 years of ramping up agricultural productivity and we can't leave Africa out of the mix. We just can't pass it by. And so we're gonna need new tools and we're gonna need new science to do that. And figuring out better ways to cooperate and to engage need to be a priority. So, and I personally am so proud of what the U.S. does in agriculture, on our research, on our technology, on our science. It's an amazing potential export and we don't think about it in foreign policy circles but it really is phenomenal. So I think looking at the fact that Africa's gotta be a priority as we look to meeting food demands in 2050. Looking at the fact that so many rising economies sit in sub-Saharan Africa. You've got all kinds of growing economies, all kinds of new demand for not just wholesale products or wholesale grains but also processed products. There's a real, a much greater incentive now than before I think to invest in this area. So some of the things that came out as we went through our study and will be embedded in our findings were as follows. I think the first issue that came up we were pleasantly surprised to hear no one said we need a whole lot more money at this. No one said we gotta go back to the old situation, we gotta put a lot of cash into this. And that was really helpful because we're not gonna be able to do that. So we wanted to look at ways that are really cost conscious and fiscally, fairly conservative in terms, I think it's in the store. Someone's testing the microphone. Someone totally disagrees and wants us to spend a lot of money. So ways that are cost conscious about doing this. One comment that came up over and over was just communication and coordination. So those are some areas that we really focused on. So the new thinking that really came out, first of all, Research Institute is very, very important. Having the model of researchers come to the US, do their full graduate studies and then go back or maybe not go back to their home countries, that's just passe. It doesn't work that well and it's just not financially feasible. But there were a number of models that we looked at. The Foreign Agricultural Service is a domestically based agency, but they have a lot of interesting tools that we looked at and talk about a little bit in the report for doing shorter studies or fellowships to bring people here to look at focused problems. So doing research in African soils, in particular climate conditions is really important in order to tackle some of the challenges of drought, the necessary changes and challenges in drought tolerance and pest control. Some of the other areas that you might do plant breeding around. So Research Institute was a really important theme. Focusing on African specific research problems, building a community of people who understand science and research, just having the sort of knock on effects of having a researcher in your family or community and a group of people who kind of understand the importance of this area really has an impact on the entire community and how people think about its importance going forward. And then obviously the rising cost of education. In our statistics, education has doubled in the past just 10 years, just the rising cost of US public university training has doubled in the past 10 years. So we know that those could be valuable approaches, but we're not gonna ramp them back up. So I think as we looked at some of the opportunities going forward for areas that could have an impact that would be sort of high value, low dollar opportunities that could really play out. We looked at, in our study, we looked at focusing on research problems. Instead of just doing broad research, I talked to the former Ag Secretary Dan Glickman and he said, you know, I went to this, I did this tour and I went to this African Research Center and it reminded me of going to NASA in the 1980s when I was on the space committee. Everyone was just looking at the same problem for decades and they never really reversed trends and looked at a focused specific problem that they could actually solve. So focusing on research problems, I think, is an important theme and I think Feed the Future has really taken this to heart. Looking at how do we make a version of corn that's drought tolerant? How do we combat this one particular kind of pest? How do we just ramp up production? Those are all important questions and focusing on those are really important. And looking at some of the US-sponsored fellowship as I mentioned, like through the Foreign Agriculture Service and other areas, looking at CRISPs for any of you, you can look for a definition of it's a collaborative research support program. And basically, you know, there's a peanut CRISP where there are collaborative research programs between universities in the US, universities in a particular country and maybe a CGIR research program to look at a problem of how do you raise productivity or how do you combat a particular problem? So those focused research priorities really should be placed high on the list. Some of the areas that came out so strongly to echo Jennifer's comments were really to prioritize institution building. Focus on individual training, making sure people and scientists have opportunities but they bring them back to their institutions. They train students and they develop programs and research plans based on those independent individual contributions that they can make. The private sector was a theme that I think is still emerging. We had an interesting discussion around a particular project, the WEMA project, the West Africa, or the Water Efficient Maze Africa project. This is a partnership between Monsanto where Monsanto donated the germplasm, an NGO, and research centers in several countries in Africa and it is fascinating because there's a great potential in the private sector. The US private sector really in many ways owns a lot of the ag research agenda in the US so there's a lot of capacity to share that information but there also, it really came out how many challenges there are to make sure that there's an honest broker, to make sure that you're dealing with the intellectual property rights, with the ownership rights. They had to deal with biotechnology regulations to make sure that once this particular crop is developed it's actually able to be used because it is a biotech crop. So there are, there's a lot of opportunity but real challenges around that kind of seed development. But on collaboration, another area that actually is quite promising and should take some more, get some more focus is not just around seeds because I think we want to be careful not to just say throw seeds at the problem or grow our way out of it because there's just not always the issue but looking at food processing, management, marketing those are all areas of real high value where if you put some research and effort on them you can really increase farmers overall incomes and you can increase communities prosperity by looking at higher value approaches. Along the lines of cooperation we also focus to a degree on ways to leverage the experiences of other countries, especially Brazil. Brazil had a phenomenal model of really investing along with USAID in a research approach to bring large tracts of land into development and into production. It's been very successful. It's created a powerhouse agricultural country but some interesting lessons within that in terms of how the Brazilians communicate the importance of agriculture just a strong communication component to sharing with the public and with farmers and creating demand for this new kind of science and technology as a critical component. And that leads me to really our last point around communication and coordination. It came up frequently that ag ministries, national research centers, education ministries, universities all have to be talking to each other. In the development of a national ag plan you gotta include the schools of agriculture. You gotta make sure that students are being trained on the stuff that's gonna be relevant going forward to the national priorities and also just broader public communication talking about the reason and importance for making I think a very valid point to encourage increased investment within countries but then also to make the case for why that's important nationally to national economic growth and development. So again, this is a huge topic. We tried to tackle it with some high level focused ideas but open up for discussion in a bit and thanks for your interest. And now talking about what's actually happening, I'd like to turn to Julie who is an ag economist by training and has the same experiences that we're talking about and just brings a lot to the discussion. So thank you, Julie. Thanks very much Johanna, Jennifer and Bill. It's, I guess Bill is no longer here, okay. It's great to be here. I wanna say I'm sorry that I'm not Colestus because Colestus is really an authority in this field, many of you will know and he's also an incredible character so I had to tell one quick Colestus story. I've been just in USCID for under a year. So before then, worked together with CSIS and really wanted to point out that without CSIS I think we would not nearly have the kind of visibility that we have today to food security and the need to sort of take a long term view rather than just sort of what are the short term fixes to food security but really what's the strategic approach and what's the US role in building long term food security. So in that context I was so pleased to have the opportunity to introduce Colestus one day to one of the congressional architects of the strategic approach, Connie Villette who is now at the Center for Global Development but then she was sort of the right hand person for Senator Luger in designing a new approach to food security. So I was very nervous but I was very anxious for Connie to meet Colestus and so we met for a lunch and what does Colestus do? He's sort of this larger than life person who says hello to Connie but in extending his hand he presents her with this small key chain which is a cow and so here she's sort of looking down and Connie can be a little intimidating, don't you think? Yes, she's looking down wondering what to do with this cow that this stranger person had given to her but anyway he said that this was his calling card and he knew that she would always remember him if he gave her this token of his esteem and the importance of remembering that not just crops but livestock. So this is what you missed. Who knows what Colestus would have come up with today had he been here, okay. So anyway, so I mentioned our thanks to CSIS and really not just the initial report that came out in 2008 but you're continuing attention to these areas of focus, agricultural research and science capacity building and I hope you know that your work and the discussions that have informed your reports have really very much influenced the development of the Feed the Future initiative so thank you very much for this and really taking the long-term view, I mean having this in the national security spectrum is something is different for all of us who've been working in this area for decades and decades. So thank you for that, I'm hoping today that you will allow me to indulge my inner wonkiness because I have a series of comments, a pretty detailed comments on the report and I think kind of going through those and probably not in intense detail but that will allow me kind of a frame for explaining a little bit of what's going on at USAID and Feed the Future and particularly what new things we're doing with building scientific capacity and research capacity that address some of the issues. So I'm hoping that to share some of these insights and new things and our continuing challenges with you in the spirit of we continue to need your help and your feedback for us. So before I launch into my inner wonky character here I do want to introduce Clara Cohen who's sitting over there, Clara, can you wave? Okay, Clara is really our right hand person on everything to do with capacity strengthening. She thinks about it a lot, we're very lucky to have her. She comes from years of experience at the National Academies and thinking about how to build African equivalent of National Science Academy. So now we have the benefit of her brain on these same problems in Feed the Future. So the first thing that you should know and you already know this is that President Obama and the members of his administration, I mean including Administrator Shah and including Secretary Vilsack and let me just say USDA has been such a strong partner for us in developing and implementing Feed the Future along with other agencies but especially in ag research and capacity building USDA. All of these people led by President Obama care so very deeply about science and technology and really building this capacity and sort of thinking about the role of the US back in the 70s and 80s as we were discussing and building a whole generation of African scientists and really cognizant of the need to kind of go back and revisit the model but end up with a new generation of institutions as well as scientists. So I mean it's just terrific to have that kind of support from the very highest level and I mentioned we're working with USDA on this and State Department, we're also working with the OSDP, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. So this is really an area that has the attention at the highest levels. So let me proceed and focus my remarks on each of the four areas Johanna that you talked about and sort of delve into a little bit of feedback on what we're doing at USAID and across Feed the Future. You talked about Johanna the need to sort of go back and focus on problems and I really liked the discussion about Dan Glickman going to NASA and wondering why they would continue to look at the same things. I think that's really right and we're really trying to get to that point as well in Feed the Future where we're more problem focused, less about sort of generic capacity building and more about how do you develop the capacity to solve certain problems knowing along the way you're gonna get your master's, your PhD level scientist. You make the point in the paper that it's important for African countries to set their own priorities and we really have to connect training and institutional capacity development to those priorities. I wanna take a small detour here and just say that we agree. I mean Feed the Future as Bill mentioned is really built on the back of CADUP, the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program, which really is about countries defining their own priorities and the US and other donors really investing against those priorities. So now the small problem with CADUP is that in the development of CADUP compacts and country investment programs, what was left off initially was attention to the capacity needed to implement those investment programs. So about a year ago, I think October 2010, right? Those of you may know this, there was a meeting of ministers of agriculture and education in Kampala, Uganda. I mean that sort of walked us back and said, really CADUP needs to now take on board these capacity requirements. But we're a little bit slow I would say in Africa so far in going back and saying, okay we have these country investment plans for the next five years, for the next 10, for the next 20 years, what are the capacity needs and how can we in the government and how can donors invest against those programs? I hope that Clara is nodding vigorously at this point. Yeah, because I think that's a frustration for us because we're primed in Feed the Future and our donor partners are primed to pay attention to country priorities, but it's not clear yet in this sector and it's not moving as fast I think as we hope. One hopeful thing about this is that we are collaborating with the World Bank and other donors and NAFE and Roof Forum are African partners in this endeavor to really do a consulting study and collaboration with our partners to better understand what capacity is out there, what institutional capacity, take a sort of quick look at the country investment program so we can do some initial planning. That's, I think Clara, the RFA for that consulting study has gone out, that World Bank study is in progress now, but this is what we expect will be kind of a major mechanism for the US and other donors to begin to invest against country determined priorities. So anyway, so that is a quick aside on that, but just to know we're a little bit behind the ball in terms of not having initially linked cat up with capacity building. The report recommends expanding linkages to US institutions using the problem-centered approach and we agree and we're looking at different models for doing this. The administrator spoke at the Association for Public and Land Grant University's annual meeting in San Francisco back in November and we also spent a lot of time talking with US university presidents at that time and really the major message from the administrator was we are back in this field. This is very, very important to us. It's important that we think about capacity building because he intends through our USAID forward reforms really for the agency to work itself out of a job and you really can't do that without having the people in place, the scientists and researchers. So the message at APLU was we're back and indeed we've increased our funding to US universities for primarily research capacity building pretty significantly since 2008. I think our calculations are about 65% increase and so last year we spent almost $50 million on research and training type activities. So we are back, but the other message from the administrator in San Francisco was we're not content, as you're not content, with the old models and there's a nagging feeling on our side is that US universities have undergone a lot and a lot of change over the last five, six, 10 years. Basically change probably they weren't looking for because of the incredible shrinking state budgets but nevertheless, now US universities are a different place than they were a decade ago in terms of figuring out how to work across disciplines, figuring out how to use distance education, how to use ICT, many of the things that when we look at the challenges in Africa we need that kind of expertise applied in Africa. So this is the administrator's challenge to the US universities that let's figure out different ways for us to work on key problems and let's not, let's get away from some of the previous models which are sort of very, very directive from the USAID side and instead provide you with a vehicle where you can suggest how you'd like to work on some of the major development challenges of our day, including building institutional capacity. So about, Claire again, this is about a week ago I think, yeah, so an RFA went out for public comment which is essentially a new way of working USAID with the US university community on major development challenges. So invite all of you to look that up on grants.gov and the public comment period I think is open until January 31st. Okay, another way that we're really getting to this problem centered approach is I think in the past we've had a lot, we've had a history of our research and capacity building investments coming from the center, coming from Washington and not being particularly well connected with a separate stream of investments from our country level missions. That's, so we're trying to end that now and we're really seeing a rebirth of national missions and regional missions investing directly with universities. So that's very, very promising. Okay, let me skip very quickly through the discussion of biotechnology. There's quite a good discussion of biotechnology in the paper and I have to say even before I came into to USAID this is one of the areas that I was most proud of the work that USAID and partners is doing in biotechnology because the focus has been really building biosafety capacity as well as scientific capacity. So really for over 15 years and we have some of the architects of this program in the room biosafety capacity building has been a focus enabling the development and approval of science based biosafety laws in developing countries facilitating the drafting of regulations to make the laws operational. And ultimately, we hope providing a pathway for small holders to access the same breadth of technologies as we enjoy here in the developed world. So we have a few programs in this area. This will be familiar to some of you the program for biosafety systems which supports the development and implementation of biotech regulatory systems. This provides policy assistance, provides technical training and risk assessment and regulatory decision making, all these things. And we're seeing real outcomes from this kind of work. Field trials of cowpea in Nigeria, banana a disease resistant banana in Uganda. And really this would not have been possible without the very careful construction of this enabling environment. And you mentioned the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, I think also Johanna, this is one of our key partners facilitating public private partnerships to access proprietary technology. So they're a strong partner with WEMA with Monsanto for example and the Water Efficient Maze Project. The report talked about post harvest food loss and food safety. And I wanted to have a small digression on this. I just got back from a trip to Ghana where I was helping to launch a research inception workshop. Our research program has undergone a pretty significant change over the past year. Again, we did our new research strategy in collaboration with USDA and the US university community. And one of the things that we've done is really focus our research in four geographic areas. And this is aiding our quest to really make sure our research investments are matching up with mission development investments. So this was a research inception workshop for one of the four areas. So this is the Sudano-Sahalian Serials Zone. So how would you sustainably intensify this zone? And Northern Ghana and Mali is our focus, but of course this zone then will extend across Africa. Just to mention quickly, our other zones are the Ethiopian Highlands, the East and Southern Africa Maze and mixed serial systems. And then we have the Indo-Ingedic planes of India and Bangladesh. So an interesting thing about this workshop, which brought together another point that you talked about, how are we working with CG partners? This is actually the new way that we are supporting, partly supporting the CG reforms, the consultative group of international agricultural research systems. This is one of the crown jewels, I think, of science worldwide. They are played a key role. These investments Rockefeller, Ford Foundation, others really in green revolution technologies and now have just gone through this very extensive reform to generate the next technology reform that we need. So in this collection, very interesting collection of most of the CG centers working on the Sudano-Sahalian Serials belts with all of our U.S. university CRISP programs. So these were the peanut CRISP and the natural resource management CRISP, the fish CRISP and others, plus the national agricultural research systems, plus the sub-regional research systems, plus our missions, plus donors who are funding the development side of things. So we're talking about research, but also this is research into development. So this area, Northern Ghana, Southern Mali, really a focus now for donors. So we had folks in the room talking about what's the technology that we want to develop? How do we want to intensify this system? But how also do we take the technology that's in the pipeline and connect it with the development partners who are working on seed regulation, who are working on commodity markets? And one of the topics that came up again and again and again is this post-harvest loss issue. Because I think, I was so surprised because I was really pushing researchers to say, what's your top line expectation for how this system could improve in terms of productivity? And I said, can you say within five years we can double the productivity of the system? And researchers always being conservative. I was shocked when they came back and said, you know, if you're not just talking about yield, if you're talking about post-harvest loss, if you're talking about improving the marketing system, that's a low bar, that's a really low bar. So very fascinating. And this post-harvest area is something that we're also taking back into our bureau and doing sort of a scan. You know, what more we might do in this area, both on the development side, because there are technologies out there. Some of our private sector partners, GrainPro and others are marketing polyethylene banks that I've seen in use in Zambia and elsewhere. There are also other technologies. So it's a mix of that, you know, plus what research do we need to do to improve post-harvest techniques? Because improvements in that area are as good as a yield increase. So agreed with you on that. Let me sort of now turn to, okay, so we talked about problem focus. Let me run through this quickly and not wonk you out, I guess. Okay, the second area was prioritizing individual capacities to improve institutions. And I think, you know, we're all in agreement with you in the paper that we really can't return to the large-scale US-based training models of the past, but we really have to move towards a model where the local institutions are increasingly having the capability themselves to generate high-quality graduates. So I think we agree on that. You know, it is a question of, I think, what's the mix, right? What's the mix? It's not that we're not going to do some training in the US. I think for specialized training, especially, for some PhD-level training, we need to continue that, but certainly, and I've heard this time and time again from researchers, from scientists, the role of short-term training, you know, and we've been talking with our USDA partners in ARS. You know, is it possible, you know, as we identify researchers having a very specific need, a specific skill that they need to learn, can we think about putting them in your lab, you know, for a time? So I think that there's a lot of fruitful discussion going on there. Let's see. Agree that the strengthening individuals is necessary, but really not sufficient for strengthening institutions, and agree wholeheartedly, you know, that you can't just focus on, okay, let's train X number of plant breeders or X number of disciplinary specialists, but you also have to look at, you know, how are we using ICT, for example? How are we strengthening the administration of the university or the department? I mean, how are they going to be funded? I had a discussion with the University of Ghana Faculty of Agriculture this week and asked them just that question. I said, gosh, you know, your government has just discovered oil. Are you going to them and sort of asking them how much they intend to give to you? And, you know, they hadn't quite gotten that far yet, which surprised me, you know, it seemed to me that they should be, there may be every day, asking where are they moving up on their priority list, but they did say that they are having more success with getting private sector companies to come in and endow chairs, for example. So I think that's the beginning of the conversation, but, you know, it seems to me, when I speak to African universities, they're often still in the mode of, you know, well, we're used to being funded by the government, so the government needs to fund us, so they're not, you know, we're not doing a good enough job yet, I think, in providing those sort of skills that will allow them to diversify their training. Okay, third and I think final area, fostering collaboration with the national scientific community. Johanna, you talked about working with private sector partners, and I've talked a lot with Natalie of Monsanto about the WIMA project, and I think, I mean, her excitement about being able to include national partners and also allow some of the national partners to go for training to Monsanto labs, and, you know, I think we'd like to try and do more of that. I think there's a kind of shocking disparity, I mean, she was telling me a few months ago that things like just digital moisture meters, you know, are sort of huge breakthrough technology for many of these scientists, so I mean, we really have a job to do, not just to train, you know, but to make sure that labs are outfitted and, you know, that these departments have a way of renewing their equipment from time to time. So I'd like to see, we have more and more research going on with private sector partners, especially related to GM traits. We're working with Arcadia biosciences on developing rice and wheat varieties with increased nitrogen use efficiency and water use efficiency and salt tolerance. We're also working with Ceres, similarly, gene and trait discovery based agricultural biotechnology companies, and I think, you know, with these partners, we haven't yet explored the opportunities, potential opportunities for training, but this is something that we'd like to do. And just so you know, I think, again, about 10 days ago, we issued a special call for a new set of proposals to motivate a new set of public-private partnerships geared at developing a new climate resilient cereal varieties. Kay, you talked a bit about Brazil and Embrapa, and you know, of course, that's kind of the classic success story for us, because I mean, USAID funded and US universities very, very involved with developing the network of Brazilian universities and Embrapa. And now, indeed, you know, we're working with Embrapa in Mozambique and elsewhere, one other country. I think they're looking at that, but Mozambique is the strongest partnership. University of Florida, Michigan State, involved in that, so Embrapa is involved in this trilateral effort to strengthen Mozambique's Institute of Agricultural Research. And we're looking forward to doing something similar in India, so it'll be sort of a three-way. India, Kenya, Malawi are the initial partners with that, so we've just, a couple months ago, sent out a call for proposals, and we're looking forward to making those awards soon. In the area of linking with the CG system, I talked a little bit about that, so we're very excited about that opportunity, because this has brought up a big problem for the CG system in the past. It's been the perception that it doesn't link very well with the national systems at all. I mean, I think the reform process really is balting it forward in this way, and so it was very nice that this research workshop that I attended, just to see this kind of interaction and excitement as the scientists discovered that they, this and other programs are gonna allow them to work much more closely together. So, okay, I think I'm going to sit down, but not before I address the fourth area, which is promoting institutional coordination and communication, and I think that is such an important point for us, but it sort of takes me back to the beginning of, well, we have cat-up, be the future very, very aligned with country priorities, but we're waiting for countries to come forward and define what are their capacity strengthening priorities that relate to their country investment plans. So I think without that, we're in a bit of a bind right now because you have the US interest that interested and the US increasing its investments in this area, of course, other partners, the World Bank as well, the European Union donors, others, but we're all in danger of sort of fragmenting our efforts unless there's this strong guide. So we need, I would say, a bit more leadership from our African partners and assistance as required to help them come up with this. So thanks, look forward to your questions. Again, thanks a lot to CSIS. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I, one thing that's striking is that we, there's so much consensus around some of the challenges, some of the issues, some of the way forward, but this is still new territory and it's going to be an experiment to see how some of these things work out because no one has the key as much as we think we have the general direction. But moving in, knowing that we agree on the general direction I think is a positive point and as you pointed out several months ago, there's been a revolution in talking about food and agriculture since 2008 and that's a hugely important sign. But you've once again cemented your place as the most knowledgeable person I know on Africa and agriculture, so thank you for that. I'm going to open to questions in just a minute, but I want to say just a couple of things. First, on ICT, which you mentioned, we mentioned it very briefly, but in our conversations, we heard so much sort of disagreement about what role communications technology can actually play given disparities in internet connections, in student levels. If you try to do distance learning with a say an American university and an African university, sometimes the students are at such different levels of knowledge that makes it difficult to have that joint class. So this is an area that is ripe for further development but wasn't really, it wasn't sort of a right now answer. It's going to take some, probably some case by case work. Livestock is hugely important. I grew up on a livestock farm in Minnesota, so I always want to say we can't forget that cattle and pigs and sheep and chickens and ducks are so important to families, so I agree because we get caught up in grains and cereals a lot. And then I think just mentioning we talk, this is looking at the research agenda. It's looking at how we get more research going. There's a huge element of disseminating research, of technology transfer, of how farmers adopt technologies and use them that we don't address but I don't want to leave anyone with the impression that we think that if you develop the technology, it's all going to work out because that's a whole nother piece of the puzzle that we didn't have in the scope of our study but it's certainly very important. So with that, I think we have about 15, 20 minutes for questions if we'd like to start right here. And if you can just take the microphone and just enter. Hi, I'm Kristen Min from Booz Allen Hamilton and I'm completely new to food security and agriculture in Africa. My training is in political science, so this is really interesting to me. I have a question and then a suggestion possibly. My question is, I think developing ag in Africa is critical, especially given food security issues on the continent. But my question is, I was recently at an Angola conference where they were talking about how Angola would like to diversify its economy by moving into agriculture in particular, but it faces a lot of other development problems before it can actually do that, one of which is developing infrastructure. So how do you deal with those integrated development issues or how are you thinking about that? And my suggestion is I'm a political scientist, I belong to the American Political Science Association and we have the same sort of issue or problem with knowledge transfer and scientific knowledge transfer in the social sciences. One thing that APSA did was create a program where every year we have workshops on the continent where African grad students are invited to participate and we send senior and junior and graduate students from the US over there and we have a summer long workshop on how to conduct social science research and stuff like that. It's been very productive for us and it builds a lot of mentoring relationships that are long lasting. So it might be an idea for how to do the knowledge transfer part and short term kind of things. And I'm a UC Davis student, I just have to tell you a funny story. This is my only experience with agriculture. No, it involves dirt. I was in Senegal doing research and I got a call from another grad student at UC Davis who was doing soil science something in San Luis and he asked me, oh, would you mind taking my box of dirt home to Davis? I trucked his huge box of dirt home, which was really funny to try to think of how to say dirt in French and get through customs, but it all worked out. Thank you. Earthy and sexy all at one time. Why don't we take a couple more questions and we'll take a round, okay, here and then here. Joel Barkin CSIS. I'd like to comment on UC Davis. Maybe they can help the wine industry be more competitive for South African wines. My question is as follows. Actually, first I wanna make a comment. The idea that I hope you're not totally rejecting the model of the past in terms of US land grant universities, yes, US state institutions are under great pressure, but the fact of the matter is at the graduate level most students are educated for free because they're given TA ships. We need students and curriculums have changed, so that shouldn't be totally written off. The question I wanna ask though is, given the varying conditions across the continent, politically and also with respect to economic development, one thing I haven't heard in your presentations is the identification of two or three or four examples of where the type of research you are calling for and which is demand driven is actually going on and where some partnerships are emerging, what they suggest for models that would be replicated elsewhere and also given the state of African universities might the African capacity building foundation which is mainly focused on the social sciences segue over into the agricultural sciences to support standalone independent research centers which have not been a panacea in the social science field but which have yielded some fairly good policy research analysis in the economic area such as KIPRA in Kenya. Thank you. Or did look at kind of the science aspect but as I started my remarks a number of the other reports look at the multiple competing priorities and one of the infrastructure being one of them credit access to credit access to fertilizer access to even your most basic technologies and so for the extension how do you disseminate whatever technologies already exist out there. So there's government policies, trade barriers. I mean there's a whole myriad of things. I think what happens when there are those multiple competing priorities is that research often kind of gets pushed aside because it takes a long time to feel the impact of building research capacity or even working on some of these difficult problems of pest disease or resilience. So the challenge for a developing country is to do these kind of simultaneously at the same time and there are many interlocked pieces of a puzzle. Science alone is not gonna solve any problem if you've got bad agricultural policies. So these all have to be addressed in tandem. That maybe brings me a little bit to Joel's point about kind of centers of excellence or training just to tackle one aspect of that because you're not gonna be able to expect every African country in a way to build up an indigenous science establishment that's gonna you know with breakthroughs. I mean there's some that just don't have the resources to invest in that kind of thing but there are regional centers and University of Macquarie is one. The Kenyan agricultural research is particularly, it's well endowed, it's got a huge number of PhDs. They do a lot of collaborations within East Africa bringing Ugandan scientists and Tanzanian scientists and then there are the ill-reads and you know the base East Africa is particularly well endowed with those because when it was the community these research institutes kind of served as regional research institutes. More than Rockefeller Institute. Right, yeah, invest it. So I mean there's, and maybe Julie you wanna talk about if there's thought of investing in kind of centers of excellence model that have regional versus simply national impact. Thanks for those good questions and as a UC Davis grad, I appreciate that as well. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I mean on the problem of integrated development, I mean that's really key. I mean before I came into government and worked with a research advocacy group, one of the key reports that we did was what's relationship of infrastructure to agricultural development? Because that along with research and universities it tends to be one of those things that is too expensive for anyone donor or too expensive for the government to do on its own and it's hard, you just don't have an advocacy group built around either of those. So it continues to be challenging. But I think we're better than we used to be at understanding that I mean the system has to work. It's not enough just to have a stream of scientists coming out if there's no way to get the technology adopted. If you don't have an extension system, if you don't have roads for farmers to get produce to market, et cetera, et cetera. So not easy, but I think we're comprehending things in a systems aspect. I wanna say, Joel, I mean definitely we are not rejecting the model of the land grant. I have very clear in my mind a trip that we did back before I came into USAID with the Mali ambassador to Michigan State University and we were having a round table discussion with Michigan State's provost and ag experiment station director and a host of other senior university officials and the Mali ambassador said, how do you do this in the land grant? He goes, I want this for my country. I want maybe not necessarily the entire land grant institution, but I want this essence which is the university feels driven to address the problems of society. He said, this is so important in what we so lack in West Africa. So I think that drives us and that was really the core of administrator Shaw's message in San Francisco, saying we're back, we're investing in US universities because we understand that this essence of the land grant model is something we need to help our applicant colleagues adapt to their own circumstances. In terms of partnerships, I guess, yes, I would say McCary and the universities in Kenya, National Agricultural Research Systems, we don't have wonderful examples really of university research collaboration yet because if you ask people why, they say, well, it's because it's not a land grant system. It's not all housed in one university. There's the universities under the Ministry of Education, the National Agricultural Research Systems are under the Ministry of Agriculture. So we struggle with that. But McCary for my vote has done a better job than many in really trying to place students with the National Agricultural Research System and create funding opportunities back and forth. So I think that that's something for us. Now, in terms of whether the African Capacity Building Foundation I think is a very interesting model. I've been thinking in recent days about especially policy research, which doesn't fit neatly oftentimes in either universities or National Agricultural Research Systems and you'd want something of an independent body and they've served that function I know in many countries and as we get into what's the role of subsidies or what's the role of these integrated systems it may very well be that we need to think again about that kind of model for economic policy analysis and building that capacity, building modeling capacity that is based on agriculture but also extends to other areas of the economy. So thanks for that reminder. Great and just a footnote, you had a group in when you're still at the partnership from Molly and they just, they were amazed that in the US a farmer can call up a researcher at a university and ask a question about something he's developed or say could you do it this way or how should I plant it? It was really a phenomenal experience for them and they really said that's what we want. Okay, in the front here. Hi, I'm Don Crane. I'm wondering Julie, how you see the individual countries in general meeting their CADAP strategies and their investment plans and are there any that are doing particularly well? Good afternoon, my name's Niece Simmons. I want to thank you guys for putting together a report. Before I came here, well, first thing I'm first generation gun in America and I co-founded the Day Network and we have about 4,000 individuals in diaspora who've worked for major agriculture companies, Gene Lever, Koch, Hershey's, any company that you can think of. We have, and African has worked there or currently he's working there. I go a lot of these meetings and I was told about this meeting last minute yesterday and I told one of my friends who I went to business school with, he's a VC and another guy. He's a private equity person. He said, Nie, why do you waste your time going to these events? You know, what's, why are you doing that? I'm like, well, I hope to change their opinion on how they're doing things in Africa because I don't think it's sustainable. And these guys collectively have about, I would say about $40 million that they are managing and they're telling me all the time for the past six years they can't find ideal flow. Meaning they can't find ideas to invest in. So the Day Network, we use the diaspora who have experiences in agriculture to provide mentorship for people who have innovations and technologies to help with leaving post-harvest losses. Now, I don't hear anything in this report. I don't see anything in the report about engaging in diaspora. Also, there's a myth there's no money in Africa. There's actually a lot of money in Africa. There isn't just enabling environment like the Silicon Valley. If you look at all these technology companies, Twitter, Facebook, they got started in incubators, enabling environments. We really need to engage in diaspora and provide incubation, agriculture incubation, kind of like that's been done here. So I really want us to think outside of box and figure out how to engage people like me in the diaspora who are, you mentioned agro in the report, which is nice and dandy, but I have my friends who are VCs, they don't want to, it's like, I mean, these guys are career potters as their career diplomats. They don't understand how to scale business, get investors, they have experiences in supply chain management, marketing. I don't hear people talking about that. And some of these guys, I hate to say this, I know USA doesn't like to hear this. They're going to Brazil, they're going to China. And if we build this nexus of businesses that can scale, then we can, they're going to be buying, drawing the equipment, caliber, we can support US jobs. So that's really what we really need to talk about. Thank you. I'm Jeanine Wood, voice of Vietnamese Americans. I'd like to tack on to what he suggested. And I feel that if you also involve the people, the local people, and I know that there has been here an actor, Matt Denman, who's very much involved in water, in how to bring water to the people, which for us, water would be one of the key, but he brings it in the form of established NGO, civil society, and it will be another form of infrastructure, human infrastructure, and social infrastructure as well. And it will immediately answer the needs and bring in the corporations of the diaspora, the philanthropy, and also build up the infrastructure for the local people. I have a friend who works for 20, 30 years for USAID, and he worked at different areas where he worked for Deloitte, and he comes and have a project for Western Africa, so, and they have a lot of problems with crops and worms about this time of the year, maybe next month in February. That's like, I forgot what kind of worms that happened last year in an area in Africa. That turns into an album, like a disaster. The whole village was covered with worms, and some things like that just happened because of the weather changes. And many times when we hear and we talk about planning and projects, we don't expect or we don't have the experience, but the people there can help you. David through CSIS, I'm a little nervous and I think you have to disaggregate the various research centers and universities that you were talking about very carefully. I've been doing work in Kenya and Ghana, and it strikes me that there is a quite serious debate going on within the Department of Agriculture in the universities in Ghana in particular, but also to lesser extent in Kenya about what their role is and what is the future of our graduates. And I think there's a very profound degree of dissatisfaction with the status quo, which is that the teaching of agriculture in those institutions has been heavily scientific. It has been very traditional, very similar in certain respects, so perhaps less sophisticated than you would get in an American or European institution. And the old guard in Departments of Agriculture very much want to protect that scientific heritage and see the future very much as the past. The reformers say this is totally irrelevant, that we need to dump all this scientific crop reading kind of stuff, that we have to think what is the role of our graduates, how many of them are actually going to be scientific researchers? The answer is virtually none. A few of them are going to be agricultural extension offices, but not very many. And most of them are actually going to go into the greater economy. Virtually none of them are going to become farmers. And the reformers are saying we actually need to restructure the nature of the teaching in agricultural departments in Africa to make it more relevant to the day-to-day experience of ordinary African farmers. And actually we ought to be producing a new generation of commercial agricultural producers who can act as a catalyst for the wider smallholder community. Now, if that is the debate that's going on, it's suggesting a very, very different trajectory for agricultural departments from the ones that you are outlining. And I'm a little nervous that this is an American-driven project rather than an African-driven project. And I wonder if we had actually agronomists and agricultural economists and teachers in agricultural extension services from African universities, whether they would actually sign up to your paradigm of development or if they'd have a very, very different vision. David, you always ask the easiest questions. I'm going to just stop you there because I think that's a lot to consider. We want to look at just an update on catap goals, the role of diaspora, and then just sort of what is the future of graduates and how do you think about that? Do you want to start, Julie? Thanks for that great round of questions. Don, on catap, yes. I mean, we have every year a report comes out from the resax folks on the web on how well countries are doing in terms of meeting their pledges that they made in 2003, the heads of state, to increase investment in agriculture to 10% of their national budgets in order to reach a growth rate of 6%. I think if you look at those reports, you'll see that many countries by now really are exceeding the 6% growth rate. Some are meeting the 10%, not enough, right? And then there's a question of what does 10% mean because I'm not convinced that we're measuring it. So countries like Ethiopia, for example, and others are way above the 10%, but we're not quite sure. It's not quite enough rigor yet in how we're tracking those investments. So good questions. I think we're doing better on that score. There's been some discussion among the heads of state and the African Union about a potential renewal or recommitment to Maputu-2 kind of agreement. So I think we could use kind of a B-12 vitamin shot into the catap process. And we need, just as NEPAD was really engineered by lead African presidents, so Obasanjo and the South African president, and Becky and others. We sort of need that vanguard of new African presidents who will champion African agriculture and not only these goals, but new ones as well. So thanks for that question. diaspora, I'd love to have your card, please. And I think we're seeing a quiet revolution really taking place in many parts of Africa where you're seeing a lot of private sector investments starting to go on now. And even folks who have spent time outside in private sector, outside their countries, coming back to either form new businesses or in the case of Ethiopia, we're seeing a number of the senior advisors to the prime minister, our returned expatriates who have a different kind of channel to the leaders. So I think things are changing more than perhaps you know, but I think we definitely need to figure out how to better engage the diaspora. Personally, I think that the next revolution in Africa is gonna be one of private sector investment. And how are we really, really seriously working our way out of development assistance? Because I think economies, developed economies, the development assistance is gonna go down, it's not gonna go, it's not gonna go up. And in any case for sustainability's sake, it's all about creating jobs and that's what the private sector does. And who better to really fuel that than folks in the diaspora who have that, both the experience outside, but also the inside knowledge of their countries. So really would appreciate having your card on that. And to your point, involving the local, I couldn't agree more, right? And that's why I'm so pleased, I mean that we're all sort of saying yes, it's country driven strategies. Yes, these strategies have to be done in consultation with civil society. And I mean, we're always asking those questions as we're going about implementing Feed the Future. Okay, David's question. Very, very interesting on universities. Yes, you know, I think though, again, most universities are sort of in that path, like McCary, even 10 years ago, there are probably people here who can know the story better than I do. But I mean, McCary suddenly woke up and said, gosh, you know, our graduates are unemployable. You know, perhaps we better have a chat with the private sector and figure out what it is that they need to have in our graduates. And they redesigned their entire agribusiness program and Ohio State was very involved with that. And so I think that's going on. You see, when you speak to folks in many countries, we're just seeing sort of a mushrooming of universities. So and I think part of that is because we have a universal primary and increasingly universal secondary education and that's fueled an incredible demand for higher education, which unfortunately is a very variable quality. But one of the fastest growth sectors, I think, is business schools. I mean, you see these kind of commercial schools popping up everywhere, with people wanting to learn computer skills or wanting to learn basic business skills. So I think, I mean, you're right, it's a new world. I think we're already out of the old model. I certainly don't want to give the impression that the US government is for investing in the old model because I think we're really trying hard as we ramp up our investments in African universities and ag research systems to pay attention to what our colleagues in Africa are telling us that they want and the employers are telling us that they want. You probably heard my frustration saying that we want them to get those plans together so that we're not going off on our own designs. Yeah, I mean, I can't say I've done a systematic survey and actually that would be interesting to do in terms of where is the debate within the universities. I mean, people I've talked to in a number of countries, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, West Africa as well. I mean, it is kind of the demand to be relevant and to be connected with kind of a more practical research agenda. I mean, the problem with a lot of universities that I talked to was that funding comes from the education ministry, which is for whom agriculture is kind of a minor afterthought and agriculture, the agriculture ministries on agriculture research are less likely to fund the universities than they are the national research centers. So agriculture research is just kind of falls between the cracks of those ministries and that's a number of countries, it's not. So I mean, I think the demand and you hear kind of the reaction of the Malians looking at the land grant university system, I heard the same thing a lot in Zambia as well, kind of how do you connect, how do you place students in the real world of where they're living, which is connected with farmers, connected with communities and connected with policymakers and to my mind that was the stronger demand, kind of a much more than kind of the old kind of abstract, high level science education that, you know, yeah, sounds, you know, it's like taking Latin and David used to be a professor of Latin in Kenya, so just teasing him a little bit on that. But, which I think has a certain importance in structuring your thinking, but I mean, I think the demand is much more on the pragmatic, immediate relevant side. All right, well, that brings us to the end of our time. Thank you all so much for joining us. Thanks, Max, for your support and thank you to Julie and Jennifer for your really fascinating comments.