Benchmarking agricultural research investment and capacity indicators in West and Central Africa

planning, priority setting, monitoring, and evaluation. They also provide information to governments and others involved in the public debate on the state of agricultural R&D at national, regional, and international levels. This brief assesses trends in investments and human resource capacity in public agricultural R&D in 15 of the 22 member countries of the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD; hereafter referred to as CORAF): Benin, Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Unfortunately, data for Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, GuineaBissau, and Liberia, were unavailable. The analysis draws from a set of country notes prepared by the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) initiative of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and national partners, using comprehensive datasets derived from primary surveys conducted during 2009–10. These datasets have been linked with existing investment and human resources datasets. This brief focuses on benchmarking ASTI’s various indicators across CORAF countries and, as such, complements in-depth country notes published by ASTI and its collaborators during 2010–11, along with a report on agricultural R&D investment and capacity trends for SSA as a whole (Beintema and Stads 2011a).