Partnerships are fundamental to ICRAF’s work. We partner with a wide range of organizations to ensure that breakthroughs in agroforestry science are adopted and brought to scale throughout the developing world. Without robust and effective partnerships, even the most groundbreaking innovations will fail to reach the smallholder farmer's whose livelihoods our research aims to transform.  

Throughout the world, in addition to its 14 sister CGIAR institutes, ICRAF has in total approximately 100 substantive partners with whom it collaborates in long-term projects and programmes. Through both the Regional and Country offices we work through strong engagement with national governments and other country-based actors (NGOs, CBOs, private sector, other policy/research/development organizations).

Our ultimate clients though, are men and women farmers (and other land/resource users) from different cultural, social and economic backgrounds. Their roles, responsibilities, capacities and needs shape their perceptions and management of natural resources, the livelihood strategies that they chose to pursue and their interaction with the landscapes they live in.

Enabling the production of gender-responsive knowledge and innovations is especially important. Here we recognize the potentially different priorities and needs of men and women, as well as the inequalities in participation, access and control over resources and benefits that are often based on age, ethnicity, and other factors of social differentiation; and taking these into account in research design, implementation and communication of results.