November 4, 2018 Food & Agriculture Uma 0 comment

Building agricultural research capacity : India’s experience with the Rockefeller foundation and its significance for Africa

By drawing on the diaries of scientists in the Rockefeller Foundation who assisted India in developing its research system in the 1950s and 60s, this paper outlines the process by which research reorganization was achieved and the external factors which induced the reorganization. The paper also discusses this reorganization in relation to the growth in productivity of the Indian system and the role that the Foundation played in that process. It stresses that external factors may frequently be critical in developing coalitions of elite needed for policy reform. It nevertheless contrasts the experience of the Rockefeller Foundation in India with that of the donors currently attempting to build the same systems in Africa. It stresses the preconditions needed to achieve a successful donor recipient collaboration in both donor and recipient countries including the need for a long term perspective, political support at the highest levels of the government, the quality and the length of service of the donor and recipient scientists and a wholistic approach to organizational improvement which simultaneously addresses the problems of human capital, institutions, incentives and administrative procedures.