Contributions

Innovation Fund: Agility and ability to respond to emerging opportunities will be key for GLDC to respond to scale-out opportunities. Consequently, GLDC will establish an Innovation Fund to provide a mechanism to seize emerging opportunities that will catalyze market development, especially in service of women farmers for whom GLDC crops are an important component of their farming system. GLDC will set aside an Innovation Fund of US$1million per annum (~12% of the W1/W2 research budget) that is used to incentivize innovation to address key market and institutional barriers that women and men farmers face. Interventions can range from innovative seed systems, value addition, market integration through to domain-specific decision-support tools and delivery mechanisms. Innovations should cross more than one Flagship domain but preference will be given to farmer- and market-facing innovations that incentivize local partners to making farming GLDC crops a viable enterprise. Principles underpinning expenditure of these funds include:

Support for GLDC to systematically engage with private and public sector, civil society and smallholder farmer actors in targeted value chains that underpin GLDC crops for nutritional security.

Fund collaborative design, implementation and outreach of GLDC projects that focus on understanding and overcoming constraints on the path to impact identified by various stakeholders, especially private sector and producer associations.

Invest in unanticipated opportunities that can build a strong business case for sustainable and equitable benefits for smallholder producers of GLDC crops.

Ability to utilize these funds to enable unanticipated opportunities for critical capacity building activities that address key institutional barriers along GLDC value chains.

Leveraging co-investment from private, NGO or public sector partners for proposed initiatives is highly desirable.

A robust, transparent process will be implemented to ensure fund expenditure adheres to formal governance process. Approval of expenditure from the Innovation Fund must be supported by the Independent Steering Committee.

An important identified risk in GLDC’s Theory of Change is if stakeholders in targeted agri-food systems are unwilling to participate in prioritization and proposed intervention activities (Section 1.3). This risk will be mitigated by GLDC investing in engagement and consultation strategies, especially in the co-development of Country Strategies for GLDC targeted countries and through alignment with the CGIAR Country Consultation processes. Further mitigation can be sought through leveraging of existing private and public partnerships – two of many relevant examples are:

Bhoochetana: Commissioned by the State Government of Karnataka, India, a consortium of eight CGIAR centers, other international institutions (World Vegetable Center), State Agricultural Universities, State Departments and private companies are working together to improve the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in India.

MANOBI-AFRICA: A private African company specialized in the use of IT platforms for inclusive value chain orchestration and smallholder business development services, partnering with ICRISAT to collaborate on Digital Agriculture solutions to help intensify smallholder agriculture and improve smallholder livelihoods in Sub-Saharan African and beyond.

Partnerships with the other Agri-Food System programs and the Global Integrating CRPs, as also with the Genebank, Excellence in Breeding (EiB)⁹² and BigData⁹³ Platforms are detailed in Annex 3.7.

1.8 Evidence of demand and stakeholder commitment

The case for GLDC, based on poverty, malnutrition and prioritization metrics, was outlined in Section 1.1. Without significant additional investment into increasing the production of GLDC crops, a concerning deficit between their supply and demand is highly likely (Figures 3a and b). GLDC represents the CGIAR contribution to meeting the increasing consumer demand for these nutritious food crops. This same conclusion was reached in two recent reviews who strongly endorsed the rationale for CRP-GLDC joining the CGIAR Portfolio. If analytical studies, surveys and focal group discussions from Phase I CRPs are counted, along with recent consultations, over 7,000 stakeholders have provided support for a R4D investment in GLDC crops.

Representatives of this Phase II CRP have participated in the CGIAR country-level consultations during 2015 and 2016, and forged or strengthened commitment for implementation towards common goals with SRO and National priorities.

In preparation of this proposal, a diverse range of key partners were engaged and asked their interest in supporting GLDC. All partners listed in Table 7 have provided written endorsement for the GLDC proposal and confirmation of their willingness to contribute to GLDC R4D implementation from 2018. The forms of partnership in GLDC (see Annex 3.2 Partnership Strategy) were shared with all interested partners – circa 20% of W1/W2 funding is flagged for partner-led activities. CSIRO, CIRAD and IRD committed co-funding into GLDC, as represented in the FP budget tables. In fact, CSIRO leads FP2 and brings in new skills and experiences necessary for agri-food systems interventions. Likewise, CIRAD and IRD are committing to co-leading several CoAs and to leverage their strong networks in SSA. Several partners provided CVs of their staff (see Annex 3.8 - Staffing of Management Team and Flagship Projects) as members of FP teams, although such was not a demanded requirement.

The breadth and quality of GLDC partners well demonstrate the GLDC team’s commitment to its R4D agenda.

1.9 Capacity development

Improved capacity and inclusivity of agri-food system stakeholders to collaboratively develop innovations that improve livelihoods is an explicit goal and outcome within the GLDC impact pathway (Section 1.3). Hence, capacity development is critical for the success of the CRP as it strongly contributes to achieving development outcomes based on the CRP’s research outputs. The GLDC hypothesis is that real-life impact can be achieved only by developing the skills of various actors. As such, all GLDC FPs contribute in different ways to developing capacities of diverse stakeholders. Many activities simultaneously achieve the capacity development SLO as well as other SLOs.

The main focus of GLDC’s capacity development will be on National Innovation Systems, specifically NARES, national and regional development agents and private sector entrepreneurs who wish to invest in GLDC agri-food systems. GLDC commits to contributing to developing these actors’ capacity and each FP has articulated its contribution. CGIAR and NARES teams are already partners in many R4D projects, often on equal footing, but also with evident gaps in skills and facilities.

While all GLDC participants take responsibility for capacity development of partners, a GLDC Taskforce, consisting of experienced facilitators of transdisciplinary research processes, will support the GLDC team in being more efficient in their efforts. The Taskforce will therefore focus on the development of the CRP teams’ capacity to conduct capacity building. Concrete activities in this sense will be coordinated during the implementation of the program. They are likely to include stakeholder analyses, capacity development needs assessments of partners, specific skill trainings for NARES scientists (e.g. leadership or science writing trainings), financial support for partner inclusion into FP activities, fund raising for capacity development activities, trainings for partners in capacity development approaches and techniques and support in embedding cutting-edge expertise into the curricula of National tertiary education programs. GLDC will leverage the principles, established modes and networks for capacity development that prevailed in its predecessor programs, CRPs GL, DC and DS. The CGIAR Country Coordination and ICRISAT’s Country Strategies will both enable and strengthen implementation of the GLDC capacity development strategy (Annex 3.3), as will the close ties with the CGIAR Capacity Development Community of Practice.

A key initiative of GLDC will be the Innovation Fund that can provide resources and stimuli for capacity development aligned with GLDC objectives.

1.10 Program management and governance

The governance and management of GLDC follow recommendations of the IEA (April 2014). A single, balanced Independent Advisory Committee (ISC) reports directly to the ICRISAT Governing Board on the performance of the program. The ISC has a maximum of 12 members, including seven non-CGIAR (partner) members and five CGIAR members, who are ex officio, including the ICRISAT Director General (DG). A sub-committee of the independent members can provide advice to CRP Management and the Governing Board. The ICRISAT Governing Board has fiduciary and legal responsibility and accountability for implementation of GLDC. The Chair of the ISC will be nominated and voted by the ISC membership, and will have a term of two years.

The CRP Director is a 20% role undertaken by the ICRISAT Deputy Director General-Research (DDG-R), who will be supported by a full-time Program Manager and ICRISAT administrative and communication resources. This cost-effective arrangement is fully endorsed by partners and has precedence in the governance arrangements for Phase II CRPs WHEAT and MAIZE.

The CRP Director will report to the ICRISAT DG and will chair the Research Management Committee (RMC) where responsibility for GLDC implementation resides. The RMC has circa 14 members, including five Flagship Leaders, the Senior Gender Scientist, three Center Focal Points (recommended as DDGs, rotating annually) and the CRP Director. Leadership of the Flagships are FP1: IITA, FP2: CSIRO, FP3: ICRAF, FP4: ICRISAT and FP5: ICRISAT. In addition, the RMC will include four non-CGIAR partners. The RMC is primarily responsible for the establishment, execution and monitoring of the CRP research portfolio, strategy, workplans and annual budgets.

Overall FP management will be the responsibility of the FP Leader to whom (co-)leaders of CoAs functionally report. At the time of proposal development, FP Leaders are confirmed, but not CoA Leaders. Deferred filling of CoA Leader roles until closer to implementation will enable non-CGIAR partners to nominate for these positions. CoAs can be co-led. Curriculum vitae for select staff are provided in Annex 3.8.

The FP and CoA leaders will spend at least 40% of their time working on GLDC, funded from W1, W2, W3 and bilateral projects – W1/W2 budget allocates 40% to FP and 20% to CoA leadership roles. These CRP leadership positions combine management responsibilities with active research leadership. Budgeting and reporting is to be done in a consultative and transparent manner. Systematic FP efforts will be made to jointly raise W3/bilateral funding to fill CoA gaps and to deliver essential deliverables for GLDC.

GLDC management will be reviewed after 12 months operation to ensure the governance structure supports good decisions made in a transparent, fair and efficient manner to position GLDC for success.