Key Trends from the 2004 country brief

• Total agricultural researcher numbers declined gradually during 1991–2001, while agricultural R&D expenditures remained more or less stable.
• Mali distinguishes itself from many African countries in terms of agricultural research centralization in having one main agricultural R&D agency—the Rural Economy Institute (IER)—that accounted for roughly 85 percent of the country’s agricultural researchers and expenditures in 2001.
• In addition to government contributions, IER was largely dependent on funding from the National Agricultural Research Project (PNRA) and the Agricultural Services and Producer Organizations Program (PASAOP), drawn predominantly from World Bank loans, and financing from the Netherlands through the IER Support Project (PAPIER).
• PNRA had an important training component that significantly improved the education levels of IER’s researchers throughout the 1990s.

Mali