What should CGIAR invest in next? With over 1,000 innovations in its global portfolio, answering this question isn’t just about good science—it’s about strategic decision-making. And at CGIAR Science Week, that decision-making took on a surprisingly playful form. At CGIAR Science Week, an unorthodox session titled “Game On: Playing with Complexity” brought researchers, practitioners, and development partners together—not to listen passively, but to play. And in doing so, to fundamentally rethink how we prioritize, fund, and scale innovations in agricultural research for development ...
Livestock is central to Ethiopia’s rural economy, providing food, income, and draft power for millions of smallholder farmers. Yet, the sector continues to face one persistent challenge, such as feed shortage. Poor feed quality and limited availability reduce animal productivity, constrain income, and keep many farmers from realizing the full potential of their herds. In Western Amhara, the Andassa Livestock Research Center (ALRC) has been working to address this problem by promoting two improved forage species, such as Desho (Pennisetum ...
Preface The Scaling Community of Practice (SCoP) launched an action research initiative on mainstreaming scaling in funder organizations in January 2023. This initiative has three purposes: to inform the SCoP members and the wider development community of the current state of support for and operationalization of scaling in a broad range of development funding agencies; to draw lessons for future efforts to mainstream the scaling agenda in the development funding community; and to promote more effective funder support for scaling ...
In 1944, Dan West and a group of fellow farmers from Indiana (United States) founded Heifer with a compelling idea: not a cup of milk, but a cow. This concept marked a paradigm shift from short-term aid to long-term empowerment through livestock. Since then, animals have remained central to Heifer’s mission to help rural families build sustainable livelihoods; ensure food and nutritional security; and subsequently break the cycle of poverty. For over 80 years, the organization has worked to strengthen ...
The international development sector has been grappling with the question of scale for decades, recognizing that our best hope of solving intractable global problems is to scale what works. Given recent paradigm shifts in the development and humanitarian sphere, funding is more uncertain than ever, which makes directing limited resources toward proven, scalable solutions more important than ever. Yet the development literature has many more examples of "pilots to nowhere" than solutions that have successfully scaled. In recent years, as ...
The scaling of Akbar 2019, a zinc-enriched wheat variety, marks a transformational shift in Pakistan's agricultural and nutritional landscape. Just a few years after its official release in 2019, biofortified zinc wheat now spans over 42 percent of Pakistan's total wheat cropping area. This significant scaling success has maintained momentum, mobilizing substantial investment in the agricultural sector. In the 2024-25 cropping season, approximately 187,000 metric tons of certified zinc wheat seeds, alongside farm-saved seeds, were planted. This initiative has mobilized ...
