Developing scaling strategy guidelines for CGIAR innovations: An update from Scaling Week on what CGIAR is learning along the way

Header photo: Private veterinarians vaccinate small ruminants against peste des petits ruminants (PPR) (photo credit: ILRI/Folusho Onifade).

By Jan Low with Nicoletta Buono, Ijudai Jasada, and Edwin Kang’ethe

Jan Low, an agricultural economist specializing in agriculture-nutrition linkages and a World Food Prize Laureate, is facilitating a CGIAR project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation investigating the process of developing scaling delivery strategies for agricultural innovations with the aim of creating scaling strategy development guidelines that CGIAR can mainstream across its very diverse innovation ecosystem. The project started in January 2024, with Low coming on board in May, after which the project team focused on reviewing existing practices in this area.

Jan Low at Scaling Week 2024 (photo credit: CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit/Susan MacMillan).

Four key insights emerged from this process:

1. Diverse scaling approaches across organizations: A rapid assessment revealed various scaling practices, with public-private partnerships and market-led innovations gaining prominence for their sustainability potential.
2. Gaps in financial planning: Many innovations lacked clear financial details or scaling pathways, making financial sustainability a recurring challenge.
3. Opportunities for improving strategy development: Streamlining processes, expanding team composition, and enhancing virtual and in-person collaboration could increase efficiency.
4. Embedding responsible scaling principles: Co-designing strategies with diverse voices, particularly to address gender inclusion and environmental sustainability, remains a critical area for improvement.

Here’s how Jan Low described the process. “We started by conducting a rapid assessment of the scaling practices of different types of organizations—donor, multilateral, non-governmental and private–sector. Multilateral banks and large private corporations have an impact at scale as part of their inherent mandate, and so perceive no need to develop scaling strategies; they seek to use proven innovations, not to test them. On the other hand, some donor organizations are investing in scaling strategies or tools because they need to demonstrate to their governments that they are making an impact at scale. UN organizations tend to embed innovations in existing structures. Some non-governmental organizations are investing in developing scaling strategies and learning from scaling experiences. Finally, while private–sector companies are under increasing pressure to be socially responsible, particularly in the climate change arena, their scaling efforts tend to be focused on training smallholders who eventually will produce products for the companies or use the companies’ products.

“Overall, there’s increasing pressure for ‘market-led innovations’—innovations that are eventually commercialized, thereby guaranteeing their future financial sustainability. This poses a challenge to CGIAR since its innovations tend to be in the public sector or formed as public-private partnerships.

Selecting three CGIAR innovations for scaling strategy work

“This CGIAR scaling strategy development project held a competition early in 2024 to select three innovations with high impact potential for the development of scaling strategies. Where possible, we wanted to include different types of innovations so we could maximize the learning process, because this is a really a learning grant.

“While we had good information on whether the submitted innovations were aligned with the strategic priorities of the BMGF and CGIAR and with government priorities, what evidence existed of user need and explicit demand for the innovations, and the results of the innovations‘ scaling readiness process and scores, there was less relevant information on the scaling ambitions and pathways of the innovations, with details about how the innovators planned to finance the innovations over the long term largely missing.

“In the end, three innovations were selected. One is the deployment of a thermotolerant vaccine against peste des petits ruminants (PPR), a serious disease of goats and sheep in Mali. The second project selected the use of high-quality cassava peel for animal feed in Nigeria. The third project selected originated as two fertilizer recommendation tools developed by two CGIAR Centers. The Ethiopian Government asked for the development of a harmonized digital support tool for recommending fertilizers for Ethiopia’s wheat, teff, barley, and maize farmers. The resulting harmonized tool is still being validated.

“Each of the innovation teams‘ leaders and partners formed core and contributory writing teams to co-design a strategy for delivering their innovation at scale and developed an outline for the scaling delivery strategy. Each team was then awarded USD40,000 to work on developing a draft strategy by the end of December 2024 and to produce a final version by the end of January 2025. The idea was to hold two workshops, with the teams working between their two workshops on developing their scaling strategies and collecting information to fill in any information gaps.

“By the end of July, we had outlined key sections of the scaling delivery strategy guidelines. The first section concerns developing a scaling vision: Where do the innovation teams want to be by 2040? What is their scaling ambition and how do they plan to reach it? The second part involves developing detailed plans for implementing the first scaling phase of five to six years. With all this work completed, we expect the innovation teams to have in hand substantial plans they can take to potential donors that they had identified earlier in the process.“

This first half of the session was followed by a panel discussion with three CGIAR scaling support specialists—Nicoletta Buono, Ijudai Jasada, and Edwin Kang’ethe—and with the audience. Low said the learnings from developing these three initial innovation scaling delivery strategies will be used to finalize the scaling strategy development guidelines for the entire CGIAR system.

Scaling support experts Ijudai Jasada and Nicoletta Buono, two of the three panel members (photo credit: CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit/Susan MacMillan).

The following were among the challenges and potential solutions raised in the ensuing discussion.

These innovations are at the right stage for developing a scaling delivery strategy

The PPR vaccine in Mali is part of a much bigger global eradication plan for PPR, so strategically, this is a good time to move to a scaling delivery strategy. With inflation raising livestock feed production costs over the past two years in Nigeria, the country’s livestock farmers and feed millers are increasingly interested in using quality cassava peel as a less costly livestock feed than maize.

It has been challenging to develop these scaling strategies in just six months

It was challenging at times to complete all the work in six months in Mali, which is experiencing a complex political and security situation. Because the harmonized fertilizer recommendation tool is still being validated in Ethiopia and is a public-sector innovation, it will take more time to scale than a market-led intervention, as it will need institutional alignment from both sectors.

We can and should improve the efficiency of developing scaling delivery strategies

Because none of the three innovation projects had yet thought through the financial details of their innovations when this strategy development project started, determining the costs and benefits of the end users adopting the innovations became a major topic at the first workshops held in September and October 2024. This issue—Where’s our financial info?—has come up again and again in this process. Having greater virtual support, such as regular check-ins with the writing team, might help to improve and speed up the writing process. We might also consider enabling those residing in the same locations to meet up twice a month or so to review their progress. We could consider increasing the resources of the core innovation teams by selecting not one but several coordinators. We could consider providing our partners with some incentives to help motivate them to spend six months drafting a scaling strategy with CGIAR. As two of the innovation projects received additional funds from other sources to help with the strategy development, we should probably look at increasing the USD40,000 funding per strategy.

Scaling support expert, Edwin Kang’ethe is the third of the three-panel members (photo credit: CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit/Susan MacMillan).

The innovation projects selected should have the potential for scaling beyond individual countries

Conducting landscape analyses for each innovation project would be useful. It was noted that the PPR vaccine in Mali, for example, is part of a global, and especially continental, eradication plan, so widening the potential reach of the vaccine beyond Mali should be an important consideration.

The core and complementary writing teams developing the scaling delivery strategies should be strengthened

We should review the composition of the writing teams, where we placed both an economist and a technical expert in each of the core writing teams and a communications specialist in each contributory team. Team memberships often changed along the way, as people often became unavailable. Future teams should identify two or three people to support each lead writer for a given section of the strategy, so thatthe support writers could replace the lead writer if needed.

Applying the principles of responsible scaling—co-designing, gender and broader social inclusion, and minimizing harm to the environment—when developing the scaling strategies was challenging

For Ethiopia’s harmonized fertilizer recommendation tool, gender inclusion and responsible scaling were inadequately considered throughout the process. While some people did raise gender inclusion considerations in the Nigeria workshop, those voices and inputs were not incorporated initially into the strategy drafts. For the Mali PPR vaccine strategy, gender comments were made but were diluted as unspecific messages. The write-shop would have benefitted by having a deeper analysis and more diverse representation in the room. And a lot of this could be solved by improving the data collection systems that should be built into the validation process for the innovations.

Like business plans, scaling delivery strategies need to consider competition and comparative advantage

Relevant cost-benefit analysis is a major need of these scaling strategies in the short period between September and December. Even public–sector goods need to show real benefits for their end users, even if those users aren’t paying the full costs of the goods.

Because every innovation and innovation context is unique, the guidelines and tools for developing scaling strategies must be flexible

Those developing scaling strategies need guidance but also a lot of flexibility. The outline and framework for the scaling delivery strategy guidelines should accommodate many tools. More consideration should be given to the type of data that needs to be collected before venturing into a strategy development process. Those driving a market–led innovation, for example, need to know its market potential before developing a scaling strategy. Furthermore, distinct guidelines will have to be developed for market-led innovations versus the other two categories because the needs and the need for detail are so different.

To engage women and other marginalized populations, relevant, diverse experts need to be part of the scaling strategy development teams from the beginning

These innovation teams often didn’t have the right voices in the room to understand gender and social inclusion issues. This can be done, but it takes time, and we are working under time constraints. Ideally, when it comes to developing a scaling strategy, gender inclusion should already be built in. We might also consider making innovation selection a two-stage process so we can have detailed discussions on these important issues in the second stage and make better selection choices because of it.