Agricultural R&D in West Asia and North Africa: Recent Investment and Capacity Trends

This report assesses trends in investments and human resource capacity in agricultural R&D in countries in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), focusing on developments during 2009–2012. The analysis is based on information from a set of country factsheets prepared by the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) program of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), using comprehensive datasets derived from primary surveys targeting over 300 agencies in 11 countries during 2013–2014. Accounting for about two-thirds of the region’s total agricultural gross domestic product (AgGDP), the 11 sample countries do not provide a complete overview of agricultural R&D expenditures and staffing in the region as a whole. Yet, these countries are representative of the region’s diversity in terms of income level, country size, and agroclimatic characteristics. As private-sector data were not available in all sample countries, the data presented in this report only include agricultural R&D performed by government and higher education agencies. Data on the contributions of international agricultural R&D agencies operating in the subregion, such as the centers of the CGIAR Consortium, have also been excluded.