Overview publications

2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the inception of ASTI. To highlight this important milestone, the program released a Series of Notes focusing on—and updating—some of the key advancements and insights ASTI data have enabled in the past 20 years. This note focuses on the prevalence of volatility in long-term funding (and hence spending) trends, largely stemming from high levels of donor dependence.

2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the inception of ASTI. To highlight this important milestone, the program released a Series of Notes focusing on—and updating—some of the key advancements and insights ASTI data have enabled in the past 20 years. This note focuses on the challenge in many countries, particularly in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA), of disproportionate shares of PhD-qualified researchers in their 50s and 60s.

2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the inception of ASTI. To highlight this important milestone, the program released a Series of Notes focusing on—and updating—some of the key advancements and insights ASTI data have enabled in the past 20 years. This note focuses on the prevalence of underinvestment in agricultural research among developing countries, especially those with small- to medium-size research systems.

2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the inception of ASTI. To highlight this important milestone, the program released a Series of Notes focusing on—and updating—some of the key advancements and insights ASTI data have enabled in the past 20 years. This note focuses on the allocation of agricultural research resources, in terms of financial investment and researchers’ time, to different commodities and lines of research.

Given the importance of agricultural R&D investment to sustain agricultural growth in the future, this study looks at the state of agricultural R&D investment in LAC, with the goal of identifying the level of underinvestment in the region. To do this the study uses a new indicator, the ASTI Intensity Index (AII) to measure agricultural R&D intensity in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and compares research intensity with that of other regions and between countries within the region.

In the current climate of population growth, climate change, and shifting diets, it is vital to be able to track the funding, functioning, and impact of agricultural research in order to improve efficiency, promote evidence-based decisionmaking, and demonstrate impact.  Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI)--globally recognized as the trusted source of agricultural research statistics and analyses for the developing world--must continue to evolve to increase its impact within a complex environment of priority-setting, funding allocation, and policymaking.

This study employs a new approach to calculating a country‘s rate of return on its investment in agricultural research, avoiding methodological problems that have in the past led to very high and implausible rates of return.

WAAPP has injected significant funding into West African NARSs since 2008 and made substantial progress in addressing the subregion’s most acute agricultural research challenges. The program has invested extensively in the construction and rehabilitation of research infrastructure and in the provision of laboratory equipment for predefined priority commodities. As such, it has strengthened the position of West African countries to perform high-quality, priority research over the coming years.