Ciara Varley, Angharad Johnston, Charles Spillane
The University of Galway LEG4DEV project team recently wrapped up a week of presentations and meetings with partners at CGIAR Science Week 2025, held at the United Nations Africa Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. CGIAR Science Week 2025 was an inaugural event hosted by the CGIAR global research partnership, together with the Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). CGIAR Science Week 2025 brought together over 8000 leading scientists, experts and decision-makers from across its partner network, including national, regional and international organisations, NGOs, civil society and farmer organizations, universities and research institutes, development organizations and the private sector. A key goal of CGIAR Science Week was to profile, communicate and further consider the new CGIAR Research Portfolio 2025-2030 through multiple interactive sessions.
The CGIAR’s new 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy was also to the fore, where CGIAR aims to plan a key role in enabling a systems transformation approach for food, land, and water systems.
The EU-funded LEG4DEV project is contributing to the CGIAR’s mission, where three of the seven research organisations advancing the LEG4DEV research activities are CGIAR institutes, namely the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
Opening Ceremony and Plenary Sessions
The Science Week was launched with the Opening Ceremony – Welcoming Science plenary on Monday April 07th, with keynote speakers UN Nairobi Director General H.E Zainab Hawa, CGIAR Executive Managing Director Ismahane Elouafi, KALRO Director General Eliud Kireger, among other leading voices.
The opening ceremony highlighted a pivotal role for the private sector in the new ‘One CGIAR’ strategy in supporting and financing innovative ideas. In addition a key message was the need for governments to be future-focused, while committed to building policy frameworks from the bottom up, where polices are informed by local and regional needs to deliver meaningful and impactful outcomes.
Innovation Showcase and Dialogue Sessions
Throughout the week, the LEG4DEV project team gave invited presentations within the ‘Innovation Showcase’ and ‘Strategy Dialogue’ sessions, across key areas including scaling agri-innvations, rural and urban food systems, agricultural biosciences, climate action in food, land and water systems, satellite-remote sensing, and gender inclusion in agri-food systems.
On Wednesday April 09th, LEG4DEV’s project lead Prof. Charles Spillane from the University of Galway and Dr. Sika Gbegbelegbe from IITA-Malawi presented LEG4DEV’s activities at the Accelerating Agricultural Innovations: Scaling CGIAR Science, Digital Solutions, and Delivery Models for Global Impact dialogue session, sharing key opportunities and challenges for legume scaling for development outcomes.
“Through our LEG4DEV multistakeholder workshops in each country we identify research and innovation priorities and partners in each country for co-development of research and innovation activities for legume scaling across all of LEG4DEV’s work packages.” – Prof. Charles. Spillane
“We know legumes have a lot of benefits in terms of nutrition and soil fertility, among others. But we most recognize that there are also many challenges related to the scaling of legumes. In the LEG4DEV project, we strive to conduct research and innovation activities with scaling partners to ensure our research outputs can enable legume scaling.” – Dr. Sika Gbegbelegbe
Other projects and initiatives participating in the ‘scaling’ session at CGIAR Science Week included Ukama Ustawi Initiative, Shamba Shape Up, LERSHA, AGRA’s village-based advisor programme, CIMMYT’s mobile advisor scheme for Zambian farmers, and AfricaRice’s work with woman and youth-led digital agribusinesses.
The LEG4DEV project team also presented during the AI-Powered Innovation: Acceleration Research for Agri-Food System Transformation dialogue session on Thursday April 10th. Following the opening presentation by the Google AI and Google Research Africa teams, Jemima O’Farrell and Prof. Charles Spillane showcased the University of Galway work on AI-enabled satellite remote sensing for crop detection and crop mapping from field to national scales. The research also incorporated examples from the Research Ireland-funded TAPAS project and the IFAD-EU funded EcoFoodSystems Research and Innovation Project — all led by Prof. Spillane at the University of Galway.
During their presentation, Jemima shared results from the LEG4DEV satellite remote sensing model that was used to map groundnut production in Malawi during the 2023 – 2024 farming season. The University of Galway team are now expanding the application of AI-enabled satellite remote sensing to over 20 other crops across sub-Saharan Africa, using their advanced deep learning technique.
Key messages from CG Science Week
As the week drew to a close, some of the LEG4DEV team members shared their personal highlights and key takeaways. Project Manager Angharad Johnston, who attended the Innovation Showcase session, ‘Addressing the nexus of nutritional security, livelihoods and climate change adaptation and mitigation in livestock systems of low and middle income countries (LMIC)‘, reflected that ‘Forages as a Climate Solution’ from Jacobo Arango of the Alliance of Biodiversity International and CIAT was a “great example of the detail-oriented and data-driven advances being made in livestock production”. Through their Bezos Foundation funded project, Dr. Arango and his partners have been working to introduce Anti-Methanogenic Feeds into livestock to reduce methane emissions. By screening the 70,000 tropical forages in the CGIAR’s genebanks, they are trying to identify those with anti-methane compounds (AMC), high nutrition and digestibility. Their overall aim is to balance these traits with drought resistance and high yield for optimised livestock feed systems that can deliver climate mitigation solutions.
Influencing decision-makers was a standout and recurring theme within CGIAR Science Week 20205 with many of the speakers asking the same question — who exactly are the decision makers? LEG4DEV’s gender specialist Dr. Una Murray who attended the Strategic Dialogue session, ‘Enabling global gains towards gender equality, youth and social inclusion in agri-food systems’ reflected that “alongside the people signing declarations, key decision-makers are often working behind the scenes, such as in political advisor roles or working in leadership roles within their local community”.
Next steps after CG Science Week
Since LEG4DEV’s inception, the project has been building a strong network of legume food systems partners, and a portfolio of research and innovation activities in each of the four LEG4DEV countries (Ethiopia, Malawi. Tanzania, Zambia). Led by the University of Galway, the CGIAR and university partners across Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, LEG4DEV used the opportunity of the CGIAR Science week to reflect, plan and strategise the current and evolving research and innovation activities that the project is rolling out with national scaling partners.
Our participation in CGIAR Science Week provided a valuable platform to look back on our work so far, share our research findings, reflect on our achievements and challenges, and strengthen connections with longstanding and new partners across the CGIAR system. Drawing on the insights and partnerships arising from CGIAR Science week, the LEG4DEV team are reinvigorated to accelerate and intensify our work with partners on climate-smart transformation of smallholder legume systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
