Since the early 1990s, there has been an increasing concern on the impact of agricultural research systems in sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and production and thus contributing to economic growth and poverty eradication. Nowhere has this concern been more pronounced than in sub-Saharan Africa. While the CGIAR system and its IARCs, jointly with the NARSs, were the main players in the Green Revolution of the 1960s/1970s, which led to significant improvements in the food security, incomes and economic growth of the countries of Asia and Latin America, the situation in Africa has been less than satisfactory. Thus over the past 30 years, per capita food production has declined, export of cash crops has stagnated and there has been increased environmental degradation in many parts of the continent.