The mismanagement of international agricultural research harms global food security

“The crisis engulfing [the] CGIAR is not just a governance scandal - it’s a direct threat to global food security. As climate change accelerates and hunger deepens, CGIAR’s failure to deliver on its mission endangers millions who rely on its science and innovation.” —anonymous

This note covers recent developments in CGIAR^[1] mismanagement, based in part on whistleblowers’ complaints in 2024 and 2025. This follows my Substack^[2] of July 2024 and from my Research Gate paper of 2023 in which I predicted that ““The recent addition of new layers of management, and of political appointees to unnecessary functions, in response to political complaints about voice will further increase transactions costs and damage scientific efficiency”. This prediction has proven accurate.

Complaints from whistleblowers

Anonymous whistleblowers first wrote on July 1, 2024, to Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food,[3] claiming serious mismanagement at the CGIAR. I published a redaction of their letter with an earlier Substack.

The whistleblowers raised some 45 “red flags”--ranging from ethics violations to misuse of funds and other governance breaches--with the CGIAR’s top governing body, the System Council, via the Special Rapporteur.

The red flags requiring investigation, as demanded in the first letter of 2024, included:

• Deliberate and systematic erosion of core independent oversight and assurance including whistleblowing functions;

• The role of the Chair of the the Integrated Partnership Board (IPB, known as the System Board until December 2023) in the recruitment of the Executive Managing Director (EMD);

• The IPB’s handling of negotiations about the role of the International Crops Research Insititute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT, Hyderabad, India) in the system and allegations related to ICRISAT’s finances;

• IPB nominations and related matters;

• Additional areas of scrutiny relating to the IPB Board Chair (conduct, compensation, decisions, accusations of retaliation against whistleblowers); and

• The decisions of the EMD and Deputy Executive Managing Director (DEMD) and their conduct relating to system management and its impact on science delivery.

The July 2024 letter sought:

• An urgent investigation into the complaints;

• Protection for the whistleblowers; and

• A review of the nominations for the new Integrated Partnership Board.

As far as the public knows the system has done nothing on the issues raised by the whistleblowers and by external critics.

Whistleblowers sent a third letter to Fakhri in July 2025 in which they complained of the dismantling of CGIAR’s internal ethics, risk and whistleblower protections. They alleged that multiple senior administrative and scientific leaders who had questioned governance breaches and ethics violations were forced out or chose to resign. They contended that handling of the 2024 allegations had been inadequate, allowing mismanagement to continue, wasting time and public money.

At about the same time as the July 2025 complaint the departure of Lindiwe Majele Sibanda (Zimbabwe, who had been Chair of the System Board (SB)/IPB since 2023 and who had been associated with the CGIAR since the 1990s) was announced. The whistleblowers allege that Sibanda was forced out after an internal investigation. I know nothing of the terms of Sibanda’s separation but her departure is clearly a positive step.

Patrick Caron (France) became Chair of the IPB after Sibanda’s departure, which is not a positive step. Caron, like Sibanda, faces complaints of mismanagement.

Other major claims about governance involve:

· The executive EMD, Ismahane Elouafi (Morocco), is possibly under investigation within the CG. Elouafi’s appointment in late 2023 had been widely questioned in the global agricultural research community. Elouafi’s appointment was approved by the System Board, then chaired by Sibanda, on the specific condition that a strong deputy be recruited.

· The 2025 resignation of Guillaume Grosso (France, the supposed “strong deputy”) from the post of Deputy Executive Manager Director (DEMD) of the CGIAR typifies the disorganization of Sibanda, Elouafi, and Caron. Grosso, whose qualifications for the job of DEMD were thin, to put it generously, left the CG after only a year. There has, again, been no statement from the CG about why Grosso left, leaving the public in the dark about what accountability means in the system, though Center scientists know that it means nothing.

· The resignation of Alice Ruhweza (Rwanda, now President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa [AGRA]) from the IPB is another departure that should have been publicly clarified but has not been.

Why mismanagement of the CGIAR is important

The CGIAR claims to be the world’s most important agricultural research program. The promise of integration and efficiency in the so-called CGIAR reform, beginning in 2010 and (mis)managed since then by the system office at Montpelier, has never been met. The chronic disorder in CGIAR governance affects global food security. Fifteen years have been wasted as public money has been diverted from science to pay for an expansion of management structures and power grabs by system leadership. A possible high-profile casualty in the internal conflicts of the CG is the 11 genebanks which safeguard the seeds needed to develop climate-resilient crops and to feed future generations, assets which may be at risk for lack of funding.

Beyond the allegations of the whistleblowers—which the system’s leaders have never denied—the system has deep cracks in its foundation, notably:

• A continuing failure to generate economic and biophysical impact. The impact assessments of CGIAR work show [4] that most of the system’s economic impact was achieved before 2000, that the great majority of benefits were achieved in two Centers (IRRI and CIMMYT) and in two crops (rice and wheat), and that several Centers have had no economic impact despite burning billions.
• The many unsuccessful efforts to write scientific strategies in the past six years. These failures, given the inherent long-term nature of agricultural research, indicate that the strategic managers do not understand their jobs;
• The constant reorganizations of programs, caused by erratic and pointless changes in strategy, have wasted scientists’ time and the public’s money;
• The abandonment of research in the African drylands—the most difficult region in tropical agriculture and one which is already suffering most from global heating--as part of India’s hostile takeover of ICRISAT;
• The fact of a decline in real spending since the system’s peak funding in 2015, indicating a loss of donor confidence in system leadership; and
• The waste of time and money in keeping the bloated system headquarters at Montpelier.

Radical steps are needed to improve governance

Existing as it does in an administrative void, the CGIAR—not a UN agency, not a bilateral, and not really a multilateral either—has always escaped financial, managerial, or administrative accountability. People who have worked in and around the CG, as I have for more than 45 years, know well the history of scientific dishonesty, financial mismanagement, and administrative abuse. Radical steps are needed to get the CGIAR out of the malaise from which it has suffered since the narcissistic CRP “reforms” began in 2009.

I respect the courage of the CG whistleblowers but their good efforts have achieved little. This is, to be sure, not the fault of the whistleblowers—the system is rigged against them. Further calls for the CG to investigate itself are pointless. What is needed is a genuinely independent investigation by an international organization that cannot be manipulated by the system’s chiefs, by the World Bank, or by the current lead donor, the Gates Foundation. This could involve, for example, a complaint to the World Bank’s anti-corruption hotline, given that the Bank manages a major trust fund on behalf of the CG (TF069033 Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Fund 3).

An independent inquiry would require a thorough study of the whistleblower’s complaints, going back at least five years, and of recent management practices in the system, including the following:

• Examination of all issues raised in the 2024 and 2025 anonymous letters;

• Interviews with CG scientists and administrators, including those who have left the system, on the effects of CG system leadership for the content and quality of scientific programs ;

• Investigation of the turnover of scientific staff and managers since the wasteful folly of One CGIAR began in 2019;

• Publication of the resulting investigation report without redactions, including reports on individual IPB members; and

• A change in the rules of the System Council require annual public financial declarations by CGIAR staff (at all levels and profiles), including lists of time spent on outside activities and of compensation for such activities.

One must not be naive about an administrative inquiry. It would probably have to be commissioned by the World Bank as trustee of the CGIAR Trust Fund. The Bank, from decades of practice, knows how to manipulate critics and knows how to let the guilty escape. Yet the Bank could for once (I see you smile) give up its obsessive need for control and allow a truly independent investigation by an ad hoc body. One possibility would be a group appointed by the OECD’s Global Science Forum. In such an investigation, “independent” would mean no one who has ever audited the CGIAR or any of the Centers, no one who has served in Center management or on a Center board, and no involvement of the head-hunting or law firms that have worked for the CGIAR or for an individual Center. Audits would require forensic examination of all IPB and SC documents, of the contract negotiations and terms of Sibanda, Elouafi, Caron, Grosso, and other IPB members plus the email and other exchanges (including those on What’s App and Signal) involved in those appointments and in the managerial practices of the office holders.

It is imperative to apply legal force as a complement to an administrative inquiry. That mismanagement in the governance institutions, in the Centers, and in the “collaborative funding” passed through the Centers to partners have never been treated seriously is a scandal. Scandals continue because no one is ever required to tell the truth and the offenders are allowed to skip off to well-paid sinecures.

The first step in a legal inquiry is to start civil proceedings in the US under laws governing tax-exempt organizations—the CGIAR and its member Centers are considered to be 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt organizations in the US and must report their finances with US tax form 990-—concerning the allegations against Sibanda, Elouafi, Caron, Grosso, and other system officials, notably the IPB and System Council members.

Fundamental to an honest inquiry into the CGIAR’s governance, finance, and management is to require testimony under oath, both with respect to US law governing 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations and with respect to the CGIAR’s own “Code of Conduct for Governance Officials”[5].

This must involve testimony from former or current CGIAR officials and donor representatives, including at least the following:

• Juergen Voegele, concerning the whistleblower allegations of 2024 and 2025 and concerning senior CG appointments during his more than 5 years as Chair of the System Council;

• Prabhu Pingali (India, Cornell University, and Board Chair of ICRISAT from 2019-25), concerning the exit and re-entry of ICRISAT into One CGIAR;

• Alan Tollervey (UK, DFID official), concerning the whistleblower allegations of 2024 and 2025;

• Claudia Sadoff (USA, ex-EMD of the CG), concerning the staff appointments of the CGIAR while she was EMD and other whistleblower claims;

• Marco Ferroni (Switzerland, former chair of the System Board, 2017-2022), on the appointment of Sibanda as Chair of the IPB, the appointment of Sadoff as EMD, and other whistleblower claims;

• Martien van Nieuwkoop ( Netherlands, Director of Rural Development at the Gates Foundation, and former World Bank manager), concerning the role of the World Bank and of the Gates Foundation in the appointments of Ferroni, Sadoff, Sibanda, Caron, Grosso, and Elouafi;

• Reuben Echeverria (Uruguay, adviser to the Gates Foundation and member of the IPB), concerning the role of the Gates Foundation in the appointments of Ferroni, Sadoff, Sibanda, Caron, Grosso, and Elouafi;

• Clarissa van Heerden, Chair, Audit, Finance, and Risk Committee of the IPB, concerning alleged ethical violations by system officials and alleged retaliation against whistleblowers; and

• other officials of the system office.

It will be said that a legal inquiry is unnecessary. It will be said that what is at issue here are disputes of scientific opinion (how much to spend on genetics or on agronomy) and managerial style (diverse multicultural organization, etc.). Even if such rationales for mismanagement had merit—they do not—the allegations of retaliation against the whistleblowers remain. The World Bank Administrative Tribunal, for example, has ruled consistently that retaliation^[6] is an offense, even in the absence of a finding of abuse of managerial discretion. The same reasoning should apply to the CGIAR.

At a time when public funding for international agricultural development is shrinking, it is more important than ever to insist that money be spent efficiently. The CGIAR is not doing that and there should be hard questions as to why.

[1]. The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research system is described at www.cgiar.org; broadly it includes 15 agricultural research centers, a system office managed by an Executive Managing Director and various Directors (HR, finance, legal, etc.); an Integrated Partnership Board (known until 2024 as the System Board), which supervises the executive; and a System Council, an apex governance entity chaired by a World Bank Vice-President. I thank several reviewers for their useful comments on earlier drafts.

[2]. See https://open.substack.com/pub/johnmcintire/p/mismanagement-at-the-cgiar?r=lxiat&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false. See also, . McIntire and Dobermann, “The CGIAR needs a Revolution”, “https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&cluster=8531033593685957144&btnI=1&hl=en. For a history of the One CGIAR disaster, on Research Gate see John McIntire, “One CG is failing (and what to do about it)”, http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.20565.09441

[3]. Fakhri (USA), the UN Special Rapporteur for Food, seems to have done nothing about the CGIAR. (It is possible that Fakhri had some communication with System Council Chair Juergen Voegele but there is no record of action taken as a result). The whistleblowers wrote to Fakhri a second time (September 5, 2024) and this again appears to have generated no action. I do not know the whistleblowers.

[4]. “CGIAR Impacts in Agrifood Systems: Evidence and Learnings [sic] from 2022–2024”, https://hdl.handle.net/10568/175083, has just been published. My review is in process.

[5]. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/88e752f3-0fcb-45a0-8690-e13339511007/content.

[6]. https://tribunal.worldbank.org/index.php/judgments-orders?search_api_fulltext_op=and&search_api_fulltext=retaliation&items_per_page=20&sort_bef_combine=field_date_DESC