In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Aly Abousabaa, the Director General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). This is the final in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres. You can hear Robin’s interview with the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, Dr Esmahane Elouafi, in episode 320, and his interview with Dr Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT, in episode 321.
In this episode, Robin Davies speaks with Dr Aly Abousabaa, the Director General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). This is the final in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres. You can hear Robin’s interview with the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, Dr Esmahane Elouafi, in episode 320, and his interview with Dr Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT, in episode 321.
ICARDA is a non-profit research organisation focused on improving agriculture and livelihoods in dry regions and is one of the 15 research centres that make up the CGIAR network. ICARDA operates across 16 countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and West Asia, with a decentralised structure and key locations in Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and India. The centre conducts research on crops like barley, chickpea, lentil, and wheat, as well as livestock and water management, aiming to develop climate-resilient solutions for dryland farming.
Aly Abousabaa has served as ICARDA's Director General for almost eight years. He brings over 25 years of experience from the African Development Bank, where he worked across 36 African countries in various fields including water resources, agriculture, and climate change. Abousabaa has a background in civil engineering and water resources management.
In the interview, Abousabaa discussed ICARDA's unique role in dryland agricultural research and its partnerships with countries like Australia. He highlighted the centre's valuable gene bank of 155,000 plant accessions, efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change, and the potential for collaboration with Australian institutions like the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Grains Research and Development Corporation. Abousabaa also touched on ICARDA's strategy to reach $80 million in funding by 2030, the challenges of operating in conflict-affected regions like Lebanon, and opportunities to leverage new technologies like artificial intelligence in agricultural research.
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Aly Abousabaa: One of the greatest challenges is not just rising temperatures and new forms of pests and disease, it's the climate variability. Farmers in my part of the world don't know when to plant, what to plant, how to plant, because the very long and stable calendars that they've enjoyed for the last 50 years are no longer what they used to be. … With four to five degrees rising in temperature by the year 2050, this has potential to reduce our crop production by 20% which can be catastrophic. The question is, science has the possibility to allow us the opportunity to avoid this happening. But you need to work hard. You need to have very focused programs. You need to leverage science and innovation.
Robin Davies: Welcome to Devpolicy Talks, the podcast of the Development Policy Centre. We’re part of the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in Canberra.
I'm Robin Davies.
This year we’ve re-launched our podcast after a more than two-year hiatus.
In this new season we’re bringing you a mix of interviews, event recordings and more in-depth documentary features relating to the topics we research at the centre – namely Australia’s overseas aid, development in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, and regional and global development issues.
This thirteenth episode of the season is an interview I recorded with Dr Aly Abousabaa, the Director General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). This is the final in a three-part series on the CGIAR network of agricultural research centres. You can hear my interview with the Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, Dr Esmahane Elouafi, in episode 11, and my interview with Dr Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT, in episode 12.
ICARDA is a non-profit research organisation focused on improving agriculture and livelihoods in dry regions and is one of the 15 research centres that make up the CGIAR network. ICARDA operates across 16 countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and Central and West Asia, with a decentralised structure and key locations in Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and India. The centre conducts research on crops like barley, chickpea, lentil, and wheat, as well as livestock and water management, aiming to develop climate-resilient solutions for dryland farming.
Dr Abousabaa has served as ICARDA's Director General for almost eight years. He brings over 25 years of experience from the African Development Bank, where he worked across 36 African countries in various fields including water resources, agriculture, and climate change. Dr Abousabaa has a background in civil engineering and water resources management.
In the interview, Dr Abousabaa discussed ICARDA's unique role in dryland agricultural research and its partnerships with countries like Australia. He highlighted the centre's valuable gene bank of 155,000 plant accessions, efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change, and the potential for collaboration with Australian institutions like CSIRO and GRDC. Dr Abousabaa also touched on ICARDA's strategy to reach $80 million in funding by 2030, the challenges of operating in conflict-affected regions like Lebanon, and opportunities to leverage new technologies like artificial intelligence in agricultural research.
Aly Abousabaa [00:44]: My name is Aly Abousabaa. I'm the Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, known as ICARDA. I've been in the role for almost eight years now.
Robin Davies [00:44]: And what's your professional background?
Aly Abousabaa [00:44]: I am a civil engineer. My training and focus is on water resources management, and my postgraduate work has been mostly focused on project management.
Robin Davies [00:44]: Have you been working in agricultural research for most of your career?
Aly Abousabaa [00:44]: I've actually had almost 25 years of career with the African Development Bank, working in development. My work has crossed 36 African countries, and I've worked in several fields. I worked in water resources, natural resources management, mining and gas, agriculture, climate change, science education and technology, and water supply and sanitation. It's a very diverse but very interesting background that allows me to bring to bear all the development experience, looking at the treasures that my colleagues in the organisation have produced over the years, science and innovations and developing solutions for the future.
Robin Davies [01:56]: So how would you describe the mandate of ICARDA? It's not one of the CGIAR agencies that focus on particular crops or products. It's more of a thematic organisation, but how would you describe its scope?
Aly Abousabaa [02:22]: ICARDA operates in the CWANA region, mostly North Africa, Middle East and Central and West Asia, and it works in three key areas. One is crops: we hold global mandate on barley, chickpea, fava bean, lentil and grass pea, and we have a shared mandate on wheat with our sister organisation CIMMYT. The second element is livestock. We have shared mandate with ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute. Our focus is on small ruminants, the type of animals that is fit for the drylands. And then we also have programs on water. Water is the most limiting factor in the drylands. In the drylands in general, it is again a shared mandate within the CGIAR; we focus on the non-tropical dryland space. And our sister organisation, ICRISAT, focuses on the tropical side of the drylands. Together, we cover almost 48% of the arable land on the planet that is under production at this moment.
Robin Davies [03:37]: And what's the scale of your operation? How many staff do you have? Where are they located for the most part?
Aly Abousabaa [03:37]: ICARDA has probably a unique setup. We were created in Lebanon, and we were there for about 10-20 years. And then there was the Civil War, which broke out. So we had to move to Syria, and we set up ourselves there for almost 30 years. We had $400 million of investments in our infrastructure, laboratories, 1000 hectares of land and almost 800 staff. But then the crisis came, and then we had to embrace a different model, which is largely decentralised. Within this decentralised model, we are now plugged into the National Agricultural Research Institutions in 16 countries with five key locations: Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Ethiopia and Lebanon, and we have a major operation in India as well.
The way we operate is that we use our National Agriculture Institute infrastructure after we upgrade it to CGIAR standards, and our scientists work in full collaboration with our NARS [National Agricultural Research Systems] partners, which expands our capacity exponentially and also allows us to transfer knowledge in a very organic way to our NARS partners. That's really where the greatest advantage is, and it makes our solutions a lot more readily available to farmers because of the national systems within which we operate. Right now, our staffing revolves around 400 people across these locations, but with the capacity extended through our partnership with our NARS partners across the 16 countries where we currently operate.
Robin Davies [05:17]: And your budget? I asked Bram Govaerts the same question, what's your total budget?
Aly Abousabaa [05:17]: We have right now about $35 million. This is down from $80 million just before the crisis. ICARDA went through a very interesting cycle of having to recover from the crisis, reestablish ourselves, which we have done successfully. And then we moved into a stabilisation phase over the past two years, and now we're going into a growth phase where we've committed with our boards that we will reach another level of $80 million by 2030. We have plans in place, both in terms of the agricultural research strategy as well as the institutional strategy and resource mobilisation plan that would put us on track to reach this target by 2030.
Robin Davies [06:04]: Now, Australia is in this unusual situation as a donor country. Almost all of our overseas aid goes to countries in the tropics, essentially Southeast Asia and the Pacific, very little further afield. And yet, of course, Australia is a global center for dryland farming. So a lot of what Australia has to offer in this field is really in North Africa and elsewhere. So when you visit Australia, what are you looking for? What sort of partnerships are you looking to form?
Aly Abousabaa [06:36]: Well, like you very eloquently summarised, Australia is the go-to place for dryland farming, and that's why my presence here, together with my colleagues, is to look for opportunities for collaboration, exchange of knowledge, looking for new solutions, but also to build on the long partnership we've had with Australia. This partnership draws heavily on the genetic diversity that we have in the key crops that are very important, strategically important, especially for commercial farmers in Australia, not just for government.
The greatest majority of the genetic diversity in lentil, fava bean and chickpea, and in barley comes from ICARDA sources and also on wheat, but of course, in a shared mandate with CIMMYT. So there are a lot of similarities that make both ICARDA and the non-tropical drylands, as well as Australia, have common challenges that they need to fight together. We face warming environments twice the global average, and this is very similar for Australia, which makes the need for more focused, structured collaboration between these two governments and research institutions in Australia a much higher priority than ever before.
So in spite of having that long historical collaboration about germplasm exchange, the gene bank that we hold has 155,000 accessions of the six crops I mentioned and probably ranks second globally in terms of the genetic diversity, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of the genetic diversity that exists within this pool. So we need to see how we can take this and leverage it to develop crops for the future that are more heat and drought tolerant and resistant to disease and with less demand for water.
Robin Davies [08:46]: And that shift that you referred to, was that a trade-related shift of policy?
Aly Abousabaa [08:46]: The government would be in a better place to answer this. But I would like to believe this is largely driven by the climate challenges that are faced. The environments where ICARDA operates are the environments that the countries will face in the future. So it's sort of like a preview of what Australia will see over the next 10 years. So if we develop technologies together in North Africa, Middle East, Central and West Asia, that becomes already technologies that are ready for large-scale adoption in Australia. So from where I sit, I looked at this. Yes, it makes business sense.
Robin Davies [10:02]: And what are the main Australian institutions that you are meeting with? I mean, obviously ACIAR, but like the Grains Research and Development Corporation?
Aly Abousabaa [10:02]: Well, we've been meeting with GRDC, CSIRO. We just met with the Australian National University. We'll be meeting other departments. We've seen some of the great innovative work at the Fenner School, you know, how they do registration of lands. There are, you know, not every experience you see is exactly replicable, but there are always elements of exchange, learning, and knowledge. There are solutions we can take to our part of the world, and there are innovations that we can bring into Australia.
Robin Davies [12:15]: And clearly there are benefits to Australian farmers in having access to the research outputs of the various CGIAR agencies, including ICARDA, and they make some contributions as well, including contributions to your gene bank and so forth. But what's the net flow of benefits there? And if there's a commercial benefit to Australian farmers and to Australian agriculture, is there more that you can do to get some of that back to then plow back into your research operations?
Aly Abousabaa [12:38]: It's a very complex question to answer, because, of course, funding contributions are subject to so many other considerations. In my past life, before ICARDA, I was in development. I was a donor for 25 years of my life. And I understand the complexity of having to prioritise investments. But you know, from where I sit right now, on the other side of the table, for me, it just makes pure business sense for Australia to support investments in research in drylands in general.
I think the environments that exist in Australia cut across the full spectrum of both ICARDA and ICRISAT, working together. Where we operate, we have rainfall starting from zero up to no more than 450 millimeters, and then ICRISAT takes over environments from 500 up to 1000-1200 millimeters, and many of the Australian environments see some form of these rainfalls. Still, the crops we do, the innovations we develop, have direct bearing and relevance.
The question is, how do you take that back home? Tailor it, adapt it for the use of Australian agriculture, many of which are large-scale farmers, private operators, as compared to smallholder farmers who operate mostly in the regions we serve. The material is pretty much the same, but you need to adapt it for mechanisation. You need to adapt it for special marketing traits, consumer behaviors, not just environments, not just for water and disease and pest resistance, but there are also consumer preferences.
You take a crop like lentil, you have issues around color, taste. You have issues in the smallholder space where we operate, where fast-cooking material has enormous benefits for women because you free up time for them to do other things. It may or may not be a consideration for Australian markets. I don't know. I cannot pretend to know the answer. But I'm just trying to highlight that there are a lot of diverse requirements, and in the CGIAR under the new breeding approaches, we look at product profiles where we try to breed for a market. And of course, that becomes an opportunity for Australian consumers and operators and farmers to decide what they want, and jointly, we can find the right material within our gene banks to be able to develop products that meet the requirements of Australian farmers.
Robin Davies [15:13]: And are there any examples where you have been able to mobilise funding from non-ODA public sources in other countries?
Aly Abousabaa [15:22]: Yes, we have had a lot of interest from some private operators in Europe. And of course, it requires a lot of creative thinking, because CGIAR, in general, produces public goods. So we are very careful about how any engagement we do would limit access to the technology and innovations we produce. So we try to make them in a way that does not deprive smallholder farmers, but it's still very small scale and not at all where it needs to be and not at all where the potential is.
We've had some experiences in Latin America a few years ago where there was a lot of demand for our barley varieties. Barley is the crop for the future, and it does not compete with wheat, but it can grow where wheat will stop growing. So the question is, even in North Africa, we've been trying to promote barley, which has traditionally been a crop that they have consumed for ages. But there is no need for competition. There is a lot of complementarity, especially within these harsh environments that we expect to see in the future.
So getting people to consume it requires a change of consumer behavior, a lot of education, especially among the youth, who are a bit more prepared than the older generations to embrace new options and new technology and eat more healthy foods.
Robin Davies [16:50]: So turning to agricultural production techniques, moving away from crops, germplasm and so forth, is there a lot that Australia has to offer in that area to developing countries? Or is there just too much of a difference of technology?
Aly Abousabaa [17:05]: No, I think within the context of my visits, I've seen firsthand the level of technology available, the quality of science, the engagement, the diversity, the forward-looking, the very diligent preparation for the future. And I think a lot of that is something that Australia could offer through its bilateral programs, not only through the CGIAR.
The way you manage water, there are very unique capabilities in the way you look at climate models, forecasting for the future, unique capabilities in downscaling global climate models into regional ones, getting these estimates to high resolution of potentially up to 10 meters by 10 meters. So farmers should be able to plan. One of the greatest challenges is not just rising temperatures and new forms of pests and disease, it's the climate variability. So farmers in my part of the world don't know when to plant, what to plant, how to plant, because the very long and stable calendars that they've enjoyed for the last 50 years are no longer what they used to be.
So the role of government extension and agents is to really help them make these right choices to increase their chances of having successful crop production and being able to sustain livelihoods so they continue to remain in that business.
Robin Davies [18:42]: You used to work for the African Development Bank, and you now work for a specialised research organisation. We have a similar dichotomy here. We have the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. It's part of the same portfolio as the foreign ministry, which manages our overseas aid. And for decades, there has been a problem about the connection between the two organisations, the take-up of the research output and the scaling up of that through bilateral aid programs, which you referred to a moment ago. Do you feel that now in your current role, that there is a disconnect between the work of the CGIAR centers and the organisations that actually invest in agricultural development?
Aly Abousabaa [19:43]: I do, I do, and I support fully the way we have described the problem. I don't have any specific experience that allows me to make an assessment of the internal dichotomy within Australia, but I can tell you more broadly, having worked in the development space as a funder for 25 years and now moved into the CGIAR, when I came in, I found that my colleagues are sitting on treasures, and these treasures are not appreciated. When you're seeing the gold and the diamonds every single day of your life, you don't see the value, as compared to someone who's coming from outside, who has spent 25 years of their life looking for solutions to resolve development problems. And here you go, they're all developed in some place.
So I think to some extent, the donors have a role, part of the blame, because they're not doing enough to understand what is out there. And also on our side, from the research perspective, we're not doing enough to showcase what these solutions are capable of resolving development problems. So I think each of the parties needs to step up the effort to bridge that gap.
And I think, you know, from a donor perspective, donors want to invest in areas with much higher success, with much higher chance of success. And when you look at the innovations we developed, there's a lot of screening and testing, and we only promote things that have had scientific base or scientific evidence that it really works. So it's a good investment for any donor to take some of these things and help taking to developing countries, or even for developed countries to disseminate and to scale up, because so long it remains on the shelf within the research organisation, it's not purchased.
Robin Davies [21:13]: Now, I know your gene bank is located in Lebanon, which, of course, again, is under serious threat of conflict, and of course, you will have staff there who could be affected. What is the planning for both protecting the staff and the resources in the gene bank at this stage?
Aly Abousabaa [21:29]: The situation is very difficult, and thanks to our great staff that we have on the ground who have been operating, especially over the past two, three months, to collect the harvest, to collect the seeds, make sure that the active collection in our gene banks is replenished, packed, cleaned, going through the health and protocols. It's an amazing group of people that we have in ICARDA, and really, it's thanks to this very resilient group of people that ICARDA enjoys the success that we have today.
The gene bank that was totally destroyed when we left Syria has been re-established between Lebanon and Morocco. We have roughly 1/3 of the collection in Lebanon, and two-thirds in Morocco. And right now, we have 100% of our collection safely duplicated in Svalbard and other safe locations. The challenge comes in making sure that the business continues, which means our ability to continue to meet demand on distribution of international nurseries to organisations not just in Australia, but to almost 50 countries across the globe who have breeding programs that depend on our ability to meet this requirement.
Aly Abousabaa [22:23]: So the very last step of securing this is that we are right now making provisions for these active collections, a substantial part of it to be made available, also in secured locations, and we have the window of opportunity to do it. We are currently busy looking for the funding to make sure that we are able to do that very swiftly and very quickly, so that there will be no interruption.
The challenge here is that the level of escalation of violence has gone much faster than any prediction. So it was not enough only to have your gene bank collections safely duplicated. You also need to look at ensuring that these active collections are dispatched, and we are very confident that we should be able to do it very quickly. The same staff that have been able to do this in Lebanon, to do the miracles, to re-establish the gene banks are equally capable of ensuring the business continuity at those difficult times.
Robin Davies [24:02]: Now, I believe you've been through a strategy development or renewal process in sync with CGIAR generally. Can you describe some of the main features of your forward strategy out to 2030?
Aly Abousabaa [24:20]: Our 10-year strategy was meeting the midterm last year. So instead of doing a refresh, we also wanted to take the opportunity to align our research strategy to the 2030 research strategy of the CGIAR given the context of seeking to work together within the context of the broader federation of centers, to combine and mobilise research capacities, to be able to offer stronger support to the countries where we operate, and be able to elevate the breeding programs.
Our work on livestock, fisheries, every aspect of the work, social, gender, nutrition, all are very key components of the CGIAR work. But we don't need to work in every aspect at the same level, because the idea here is to be very complementary with each other at the level of different centers. That's really the greatest strength that we have.
So in terms of the thematic areas, we remain within the same three areas I've described in the whole area of crops, livestock and water, but we are looking for new areas that are needed in each of these three areas to become stronger through building new capabilities and looking at areas where we could leverage new technologies, for example, on artificial intelligence, on data management, on remote sensing, to do it in a much more structured way to build additional capabilities to leverage the work that has been done by our scientists, analyse data in ways that we have not done in the past, leverage these solutions and take them for scaling across geographies in ways we have not done before, significantly supporting our countries in taking solutions, extension messages, leveraging mobile technologies and strengthening ability of farmers, extension workers to diagnose use of pests and disease, take information on climate, being able to mine the data that we have from our gene banks in a much deeper way, to look for solutions, to look at options by context.
You know, what you see today has also been witnessed in different parts of the world at different times of history. So looking at the genetic diversity and being able to look for solutions, look for material that has potential to answer future challenges that we will face, and experiment with it today.
Some of the great work I've seen in ANU this afternoon is testing for high levels of carbon dioxide in the environment and how this will affect the growth of plants. Increasingly, some of these future scenarios you need to be able to simulate what those future scenarios would look like and test your crops and varieties to see how this will affect growth. One of the challenges we foresee is that, with four to five degrees rising in temperature by the year 2050, this has potential to reduce our crop production by 20% which can be catastrophic.
The question is, science has the possibility to allow us the opportunity to avoid this happening. But you need to work hard. You need to have very focused programs. You need to leverage science and innovation, not only within ICARDA, but across the CGIAR, but also across partners. A country like Australia has enormous contributions to make in this space so that we preempt these negative consequences as and when they will happen. Because the fact that we are able to cope with today's challenges is because our predecessors have worked on programs 15, 20, 30 years ago, and that's why we enjoyed the solutions that we have today. If not for this visionary group of individuals who worked in the past, we would not have been able to cope with the current situations we see. And I think we have an obligation to also work for the immediate future, medium and long term as well, to prepare for that, and that's what this strategy is allowing us to do.
Robin Davies [28:44]: When you look back over that period of time, what are you most proud of? What are the achievements that you're most satisfied with?
Aly Abousabaa [28:53]: I think the fact that we have been able to overcome the crisis that we faced in Syria, thanks to my colleagues, we've been able to rebuild. Thanks to my colleagues, we have stabilised the organisation, and we've been seeing signs of growth of up to 15% over the past couple of years. We intend to take this much more aggressively over the next, hopefully five to six years, to reach and potentially exceed the size of our programs, not only in financial terms, but in terms of our scientific outputs, innovations.
And we are confident we can do much better than that, because now we are able to leverage the capabilities of our national agriculture research institutions in the area where we operate. So we have aspirations for much bigger impact, much stronger benefits and improvement in the livelihood of farmers through improved capabilities, innovations and science that we will be able to generate in the whole area of crops, water and livestock that will make the life of people living in the rural areas much better, much stronger, thanks to the collaboration with our NARS partners across this human region.
Robin Davies [30:20]: Well, I think I'll leave it there. I really appreciate the time you've given me, and wish you all the best with your plans for the future, and I hope that your Lebanon operation is not adversely affected by events.
Aly Abousabaa [30:20]: Thank you so much for your time and for the interest of the Crawford Fund. I just want to recognise that there have been two major visits from colleagues that have taken the time to come and understand more about the research we do and the solutions and the innovations we generate. So I just want to take the opportunity to express our gratitude for your colleagues having taken the interest and time and the trouble of traveling across the world to come and visit us. Please continue to do so. It's a very important avenue to build bridges between Australia and ICARDA and the CGIAR more broadly. So we very much look forward to the continuation of this very fruitful collaboration with Australian institutions, with the Crawford Fund and with the Australian farmers.
Robin Davies [30:20]: Great. Thanks very much.
Aly Abousabaa [30:20]: Thank you.
Outro: Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre. Our producers are Robin Davies, Amita Monterola, Jackie Hanafie and Finn Clarke. You can read and subscribe to our daily blogs on aid, international development and the Pacific at devpolicy.org, and you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You can send us feedback and ideas for episodes to devpolicy@anu.edu.au.