The CGIAR Scaling Fund has selected eight agricultural innovations for its 2026 round, giving them catalytic grants plus technical help to move from successful trials into wide use. The fund, in its third year, is run by CGIAR's Scaling for Impact program and coordinated by the Impact at Scale program at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
Its target is what CGIAR calls the innovation "valley of death": a technology that works in trials but lacks the finance, delivery partners or institutional backing to reach more farmers.
One winner, My Farm Trees, developed by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, has helped 9,000 farmers plant 440,000 trees on 4,500 hectares of restored land. Tested through 30 projects in 14 countries, the platform links seed systems, nurseries and farmers with monitoring and performance-based digital payments. Kenya's Ministry of Environment and Forestry is building it into national verification systems, and the World Bank is investing in its digital infrastructure.
Two winners deliver advice. In Tanzania and Nigeria, AKILIMO, led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) with IRRI and AfricaRice, has added RiceAdviceLite to a cassava platform already used by more than 100 value-chain partners, giving farmers tailored recommendations on planting and fertiliser. In Rwanda, the Smart Nkunganire System Fertilizer Recommendation Tool sits inside a system serving 3.2 million registered farmers and more than 3,000 agro-dealers who order subsidised inputs.
The Solar-Based Irrigation Bundle, developed and scaled in Ghana since 2021, uses pay-as-you-go payments to get around the upfront cost of irrigation. Nepal's Village Livestock Promoters put livestock advice inside farmer organisations, and the team aims by 2027 to secure budgets from four provincial governments, each supporting 15 promoters a year. In the Horn of Africa, 25 One Health Units bringing human health, livestock and rangeland staff together were working in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia by October 2025; the plan is more than 40.
On Lake Victoria, WorldFish's Climate-Smart Fish Processing promotes solar tent dryers, solar and hybrid freezers and improved smoking kilns; early evidence points to better quality, longer shelf life and less firewood. AfricaRice's GEM Parboiling System improves rice quality, milling recovery and market value and can run on rice husks, though adoption remains below its potential after more than a decade of development.
The fund, part of the Ukama Ustawi Plus project, is supported by New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Its bet is that tools farmers already find useful will spread only when someone pays for and delivers them.
Source: CGIAR
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