Dear GFAR Members, Partners and Friends,
As we wrap up a year of hard work and conclude the EC funded project, we are pleased to provide you with an overview of the significant achievements and progress made by GFAR in 2023. Throughout the year, we have been committed to advancing our mission and fostering partnerships to find and implement solutions to problems and to drive positive change regarding the much-needed transformation of the agrifood system worldwide. 

GFAR governance
A significant and noteworthy event this year was GFAR’s hybrid Steering Committee meeting held in June during the Africa Agribusiness and Science Week in Durban, South Africa. It was the first in-person SC meeting in several years and provided a welcome change from all the virtual meetings previously held due to the Covid 19 pandemic restrictions on travel.

The most notable outcome is that after several intensive debates, GFAR’s Steering Committee unanimously agreed to accept the hosting offer presented by CGIAR/ABC. Following our funder’s advice, GFAR will from 1 February 2024 onwards receive EC funding via IFAD in CGIAR/ABC. This will allow GFAR to be more independent and agile, and to better fulfil its mandate and mission.

Another important achievement was the engagement of GFAR and the Regional Fora in the CGIAR High-Level Advisory Panel (HLAP) on how to better partner with the Global South, with our input included in the final report and currently being followed-up.

Thanks to our work on the HLAP it became evident that GFAR's mission has yet to be fully realized. As a result, we have diligently undertaken steps to address this realization; 

• we explored the concept of launching a Global NARS Consortium (GNC), aiming to connect National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) with the CGIAR;  
• the establishment of the GNC entrusted to GFAR  (Bangkok Declaration); and  
• we committed in our EC project proposal to launch the GNC in June 2024.

Read the full letter here.