The University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, through the AIM for Scale initiative led by Paul Winters, has been awarded a $2.65 million grant from the United Arab Emirates Presidential Court’s International Affairs Office to support country-led efforts to scale agricultural innovations across Africa and beyond.
The two-year grant will fund targeted technical assistance to governments seeking to integrate evidence-based agricultural solutions into major public programs designed to increase farmer incomes and improve food security. In particular, the funding will support AIM for Scale’s work with governments to develop clear plans for national expansion and to deploy national and international consultants who work alongside government teams during critical phases of multilateral development bank project design and implementation, helping ensure large public investments are effectively designed and funded.
AIM for Scale works with governments to help integrate proven agricultural solutions into large, nationally funded programs that can reach millions of farmers.
“Strong evidence already exists for many agricultural innovations that can improve farmer livelihoods,” said Winters, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Sustainable Development at the Keough School and executive director of AIM for Scale. “This grant allows us to work directly with governments to turn that evidence into scalable, nationally embedded programs that can reach millions of farmers.”
As AIM for Scale’s engagement with target country governments — Bangladesh, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, India, Peru and other partner countries — has progressed to support the scaling of the initiative’s first two innovation areas of focus, Weather Services for Farmers and Digital Advisory Services for Agriculture, a common challenge has emerged: many governments have clear priorities and strong evidence, but lack the technical capacity to turn those priorities into large, investment-ready programs that can be supported by multilateral development banks.
This grant directly addresses that gap.
Through targeted technical assistance, the project will support governments during critical phases of multilateral development bank project design and implementation. The goal is to ensure that proven innovations are not only incorporated into major public investments, but embedded in ways that are context-specific, evidence-based and sustainable within national delivery systems.
Initial country engagement will focus on Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda, where major public investment programs are already being designed and the demand for technical support is high.
The grant will finance a combination of global coordination and country-level delivery activities, including technical expertise and staffing within the AIM for Scale Secretariat; specialized consultants to support governments and multilateral development bank task teams; embedded country-level technical assistance; and workshops and convenings to co-design interventions, align stakeholders and share lessons across countries.
Approximately half of the grant will be allocated to a sub-award for C4Impact Advisory Group, a Rwanda-based social enterprise founded by Agnes Kalibata, former minister for agriculture and animal resources of Rwanda and former president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. C4Impact brings deep experience supporting governments, regional institutions and development partners across Africa.
Through the dedicated $1.28 million subaward, C4Impact will lead in-country delivery, working closely with government counterparts to conduct readiness assessments, support government-led action plans, broker partnerships and financing and ensure innovations are politically supported and embedded within national systems.
Together, these investments are intended to act as a catalyst to help governments unlock and shape much larger multilateral development bank-financed programs and accelerate nationwide adoption of proven agricultural innovations at a national scale.
This story originally posted at keough.nd.edu.
[Photo credit: Farmers in northern Rwanda prepare land for planting climbing beans. Photo licensed by Creative Commons via Flickr]