AIM for Scale and CGIAR Launch Scaling Partnership
How do promising agricultural innovations move beyond pilots and reach the farmers who need them most?
That question framed a recent webinar marking the launch of a partnership between the Agricultural Innovation Mechanism for Scale (AIM for Scale) and CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact Program, with support from the International Affairs Office at the UAE Presidential Court and the Gates Foundation.
The discussion brought together leaders from government, philanthropy, research, finance and implementation to explore one of the most persistent challenges in agricultural development: not whether solutions exist, but how to make them work at scale, through systems that are sustainable, inclusive and able to improve lives.
Opening the event, Yaw Nyarko, Professor of Economics at New York University (NYU), NYU Abu Dhabi, and Vice Chair of AIM for Scale’s Advisory Panel, set out the central challenge. Agricultural research has generated ideas, evidence and innovations that can improve farmer livelihoods. But the real test is whether those ideas can reach people in practice.
“Farmers are waiting for innovations,” he said, reflecting on his work with smallholder farmers in Ghana and elsewhere. The task now is to ensure that research-backed solutions do not remain confined to papers, projects or pilots, but translate into real impact.
Fatema AlMulla, Senior Specialist of Development at the International Affairs Office at the UAE Presidential Court, described the launch as a milestone in the UAE’s work to strengthen global food security through research, evidence and partnership.
She noted that AIM for Scale and CGIAR Scaling for Impact share a commitment to translating science into real outcomes for farmers. The partnership brings together CGIAR’s decades of agricultural research, global network and new Scaling for Impact platform with AIM for Scale’s experience working with governments and multilateral development banks to move evidence-backed innovation into national programs.
Together, they are well placed to answer one of the most important questions in development: how to move from solutions that work in pilots to solutions that reach millions of farmers.
That ambition is already taking shape in countries including Kenya. Fatema highlighted forthcoming work by AIM for Scale and CGIAR to support Kenya’s meteorological services in scaling weather forecasts for farmers, helping them make better agricultural decisions in the face of climate variability. AIM for Scale Program Director Tobi Baedeker and Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT Senior Scientist Ani Ghosh went on to elaborate that the collaboration in Kenya will focus on strengthening digital advisory systems more broadly. Building on previous CGIAR work, including that of AICCRA — Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa, the aim is to bring together weather, climate, agronomy, soil and fertilizer information and translate it into practical advice that farmers can receive through channels they already use.
This means working through national institutions such as Kenya’s meteorological services, KALRO, county extension systems, farmer registries, private sector agri-tech partners and organizations with existing farmer networks.
Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Director of Adaptive and Equitable Food Systems at the Gates Foundation, placed the partnership in the context of mounting pressure on small-scale farmers.
Farmers are facing higher input prices, increasing climate variability, El Niño-related shocks and fewer resources to respond. At the same time, she stressed, solutions do exist. CGIAR and its partners have spent decades generating evidence on climate solutions, improved crops, advisory services and other innovations.
But evidence alone is not enough.
Ana Maria challenged the partnership to move beyond asking whether a technology can be scaled. Instead, scaling efforts must ask harder questions: for whom does this technology work? Who might be left out? Under what conditions will it succeed? Who will pay? What incentives are needed? And what should be done when evidence suggests the need to adapt, pause or stop?
For Ana Maria, the value of the new partnership lies in building a more disciplined bridge between research, government systems, finance, markets and last-mile delivery.
Drawing on her experience with AICCRA she emphasized that innovation must be packaged with the right enabling environment: partnerships, institutions, data systems, finance and feedback loops that allow solutions to work in real contexts.
She also made a strong call for responsible scaling. Scaling pathways must be clear about benefits and risks, synergies and trade-offs, and possible unintended consequences. They must ask who gains, who may lose, and when evidence requires a change in direction.
Above all, she said, the partnership must be gender intentional from the start. Women play a major role in agriculture but continue to face barriers in access to land, finance, information and technology. A scaling pathway that ignores these barriers will not truly scale, and may reinforce the inequalities it is trying to solve.
Sandra Milach, CGIAR Chief Scientist, welcomed the partnership as timely and necessary. Across CGIAR centers and partners, she said, there is no shortage of innovation. The challenge is ensuring these innovations benefit the farmers, communities and food systems facing the greatest pressures from climate change.
She positioned CGIAR Scaling for Impact as a central part of CGIAR’s 2025–2030 research portfolio: a program designed to connect science, partnerships, finance and delivery so that innovations can move through systems and reach scale.
Paul Winters, Executive Director of AIM for Scale and Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, explained that AIM for Scale focuses on agricultural innovations where evidence shows strong potential, but where adoption has not yet reached the scale needed. Its priority areas include AI-generated weather forecasts, digital advisory services, livestock productivity, soil health and AI for agriculture.
Closing the webinar, Timothy Krupnik, Director of CGIAR Scaling for Impact, said scaling must be treated as a discipline. Reach is not the finish line. The deeper question is whether farmers use services to make different decisions on their farms.
That focus captures the wider ambition of the CGIAR–AIM for Scale partnership: to move beyond generating more knowledge and toward getting knowledge used — in government systems, investment pipelines, advisory platforms and markets.
Its success will be measured not by the number of pilots launched, but by whether millions of farmers can access, trust, use and benefit from innovations that improve resilience, livelihoods and food systems at scale.
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