Whereas all groups involved in agricultural research claim to focus on poverty and food security for the poor, this rhetoric has not been followed through to the strategic principles operational in programmes. The poor remain subjects of discussion, monitoring and evaluation, and have not been actively involved in research processes intended to benefit them. This has become the main concern of the NGO committee of the consultative Group for International Agricultural research (NGOC), and preoccupation of the members in the regions. There is need to build capacity and a collective voice of Civil Society Organizations, CSOs (especially farmer groups) to constructively participate in agricultural research. The main issue however is that although several donors appreciate and will want to see farmer¿s organizations and CSOs active in research, very few readily support programmes that will mobilize, coordinate and equip CSOs to do so. To this end farmer¿s organizations (and therefore farmers) fail to engage with higher institutions for lack of capacity