News

UPDATE: CGIAR Science Week has been postponed.

The UK-CGIAR Centre will convene a high-level panel at CGIAR’s upcoming inaugural Science Week. Entitled Leveraging science excellence and development impact through partnerships, the side event will explore best practices when forging, sustaining and evaluating international development collaborations and discuss the work being undertaken to develop diverse, equitable, transparent, and impactful partnerships.    

Date and time: July 4, 2024. 10-11:30am (EAT)

Location: Conference Room 2, UN Office Nairobi

Information on all the sessions at Science Week and how to register can be found here

Presenters and panelists

  • Chair of the UK-CGIAR Centre Board (side-event moderator): Dr Janny Vos 
  • FCDO Head of Food & Agriculture Research and Evidence Team: Dr Rachel Lambert
  • Director of the UK-CGIAR Centre: Dr Richard Shaw 
  • Netherlands – CGIAR research collaboration programme: Ms Marielle Karssenberg
  • CGIAR MD: Dr Ismahane Elouafi 
  • CABI DG: Dr Dennis Rangi
  • Member of UK-CGIAR SIAG committee (tbc)
  • A senior representative from KALRO (tbc)
  • A representative of NL Ministry of Foreign Affairs (tbc)

Synopsis

Nearly 350 million people worldwide are affected by extreme hunger. Many of the 500 million small-scale farmers, who provide nearly a third of the world’s food, live in regions especially affected by climate change. Partnerships are pivotal to improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers while easing the global food crisis. CGIAR identifies partnerships as fundamental to its ability to deliver outcomes that drive food, land, and water systems transformation. UN Sustainable Development Goal 17 aims to revitalise global partnerships for sustainable development. 

The side-event will offer an opportunity to discuss questions around best practice mechanisms for partnership identification, engagement and monitoring of success. The discussion will be informed by key lessons learned and aims to identify success factors in partnering for science excellence and development impact.

Two case studies of CGIAR collaborations will be presented: the UK-CGIAR Centre and the Netherlands (NL) – CGIAR Research Programme. These organisations have been created to improve access to cutting-edge science so that it benefits all parties and improves impact on the ground.

The case studies will be followed by an interactive panel debate among CGIAR and its partners to encourage critical self-reflection on how the formation, implementation, and delivery of equitable partnerships can help achieve excellent science while delivering development impact.

The event will be streamed live by CGIAR.