Abstract:
At the CG1AR mid-term meeting in Tokyo in 1985, the donors decided that long-term solutions to the
crisis in African agriculture required significant technological input, but the information and technology
that emerged from the international agricultural rr.w..arch centres (IARCs) were not successfully
transferred to end-users through the national agricultural research systems (NARSs). The latter were
failing to generate technology of value for development when most economies were highly dependent on
agriculture for income generation, food security and economic growth. The donors decided that a special
program %vas needed for the coordination of donor assistance to stimulate, support and sustain indigenous
research capacity and, thus, SPAAR was born.