Taking a leaf from the EU’s book, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is offering us a PEARL. That’s the Program for Emerging Agricultural Research Leaders. Tremendous idea, to train and empower younger scientists, specifically “African scientist[s] residing in sub-Saharan Africa or planning to relocate to sub-Saharan Africa to implement the proposed project”.
With this call, we are looking for projects led by MSc and PhD scientists at national agricultural research institutions and universities in sub-Saharan Africa, working in collaboration with other researchers internationally (either within Africa or beyond the continent).
There’s up to US$500,000 available for each project, and you still have until 30 September to get your pre-proposal in. But don’t think you can work on any old thing. No sirree. There are “Exclusionary criteria,” for example no “[i]mprovements to current regulated chemicals or the development of new chemical formulations that would be considered regulated chemicals”. And no (or not much) agricultural biodiversity:
We will NOT consider funding for:
<snip>
Proposals that are not applicable to one or more of the following crop and livestock species: maize, wheat, rice, millet, sorghum, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, beans, cowpeas, chickpeas, groundnuts, banana, chickens, small ruminants (e.g. goats), and cattle;
No idea what order those are in; possibly their importance in the BMGF pantheon. But if you wanted to work on, say, bambara groundnuts, leafy greens, cavies, baobab, fonio, cane rats, cocoyam, tef etc., etc., etc you’re out of luck.
You obviously have nothing to contribute to whether “three-quarters of the world’s poorest people” have enough to eat, are able to send their children to school, and can earn any money to save and lead healthy and productive lives.
Too bad.
Has anyone asked them why the exclusions? Are they maybe trying to limit funds to research areas they perceive (rightly or wrongly) to be most likely to aid long-term development-related projects?
But it would definitely be nice to see more support for just any research.
Sure, the list sets limits. It’s quite long though, by any standard, encouraging research in no less than 16 agricultural ‘products’. Who’s to complain really, if not for a publicity stunt? :)
One reason for that list could well be noble in purpose: training scientists in crops and cattle research with tangible economic added-value will keep them motivated and employed. In turn perhaps, this small, dedicated and highly trained group of agricultural research leaders-to-be may have a positive impact on the quality and scope of tertiary agricultural education in some African countries, effectively pushing younger researchers to explore underutilised crops and livestock.
Scientists trained under this scheme will not be remotely controlled zombies. Let’s wish them good luck and hope they give back some of their scientific know-how to the next generation of agricultural scientists.
Maybe there’s another foundation for those weirder crops.
It is possible that they want to focus species grown all over the tropics with a lot of information already available (and already supported by CGIAR Centres), or where work in Africa will have spillovers to elsewhere. Or, again, the BMGF may want to counter the calls of foreign NGOs telling Africa that its food sovereignty depends on local crops only, and that alien crop introductions are evil (although they now count for 70% of the food crops in sub-Saharan Africa).