This policy brief has been developed to offer specific key recommendations and lessons learned that the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation in Egypt could consider for strengthening its support to the country’s NARS. Ultimately, the recommendations are intended to ensure efficient adoption of the proposed methodologies for enhancing the impact of Egypt‘s NARS efforts on AR4D.

This case study was conducted to provide a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities related to Egypt’s agricultural research and organizational development to draw lessons and develop supporting guidelines. This study aimed to enhance efforts exerted by Egypt’s NARS in the field of developmental research by formulating an integrated and coherent approach for research and dissemination of proven technologies and practices. Such approaches are expected to address key bottlenecks and provide the needed direction and means for sustainable improved implementation of AR4D. This can ultimately lead to enhancing and empowering the capacity of Egypt’s NARS to better inform and influence policies and facilitate institutional changes required in the agricultural sector. As part of the efforts of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support and strengthen NARS’ research impact and their links to extension service systems, the present assessment was carried out to establish a deeper insight into challenges and opportunities that are facing NARS in Egypt.

This report provides a brief review of recent trends and key policies in strengthening national agricultural research systems. Chapters provide a brief overview of the recent evolution of national research systems and a synthesis of policy issues and good practices for developing these systems including the involvement of universities and the private sector. They also focus on key policy and institutional reforms for strengthening public research institutions including funding, research management, and client orientation. Finally they discuss implications for the World Bank in its ongoing efforts to strengthen national research systems.

This book is about International Service for National Agricultural Research's (ISNAR) study to identify key factors that influenced the effectiveness and efficiency of links between research and technology transfer. It recommends ways to improve these links and reflects the progress made till date.

The sector-wide approach currently dominates as the strategy for developing the agricultural sector of many African countries. Although it is recognized that agricultural research plays a vital role in ensuring success of sectorwide agricultural development strategies, there has been little or no effort to explicitly link the research strategies of the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) in African countries to the research agenda that is articulated in sectorwide agricultural development strategies. This study fills that gap by analyzing the readiness of Malawi’s NARS to respond to the research needs of the national agricultural sector development strategy, namely the Agriculture Sector Wide Approach (ASWAp) program. Results of a social network analysis demonstrate that public agricultural research departments play a central coordinating role in facilitating information sharing, with other actors remaining on the periphery. However, that analysis also shows the important role other actors play in relaying information to a wider network of stakeholders. These secondary information pathways can play a crucial role in ensuring successful implementation of the national agricultural research agenda. Policymakers and managers of public research programs are called upon to integrate other research actors into the mainstream national agricultural research information network. This is vital as other research actors are, at the global level, increasingly taking up a greater role in financing and disseminating research and research results, and in enhancing the scaling up and out of new agricultural technologies.