DIRECTOR -GENERAL'S STATEMENTS

The first thought that strikes me, looking for a single phrase to sum up 1988, is that this was probably ICRAF's last normal year, as we've become used to it over the past half-decade. Of course, the year saw its share of scientific progress, growth (particularly staff expansion and internal administrative restructuring), successes and of course some frustrations. Growth and progress have been normal conditions at ICRAF for some time.

But 1988 saw no organization-wide changes comparable to the new programme of work and restructuring of 1986, the tenth anniversary and move to the newly built ICRAF House headquarters in 1987, or indeed to what lies ahead for us in 1989 and 1990. It was a year not of revolutions but of steadily measured advance.

On January 1, we were 50 professional staff—all categories—and at the end of the year we were 62. While our total budget in 1987 (core and projects) was US$4.6 million, it rose to US$5.9 million in 1988. The continued expansion and development of the AFRENA programmes associated with the COLLPRO Division account for much of this growth. At the end of the year, 10 ICRAF scientists were based at national research institutions in seven African countries.

In recognition of the collaborative field programmes' growing importance, the Programme Committee of ICRAF's Board of Trustees held its first meeting outside Nairobi to review implementation of the Southern Africa AFRENA programme. Several Board members met in Lusaka, Zambia, with the chairmen of the Regional and National Agroforestry Steering Committees and Zambian and ICRAF scientists. Participants toured research sites at Chalimbana, outside Lusaka, and Chipata, in the Eastern Province, where AFRENA projects are in progress.

The INFOCOMM and RDD Divisions have also undergone considerable change. INFOCOMM added several new professional staff and specialized technicians during the year. As a result, the quality and quantity of information and publications output have significantly increased. In RDD, a restructuring of the division into three programmes has increased the responsiveness of ICRAF's research efforts to the needs of COLLPRO as well as to the general agroforestry research community.

Director-General's Statement ICRAF's Director-General, Dr. Bjorn Lundgren, right, discusses multipurpose tree uses with the Kenya Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, Hon. JJM. Nyagah, left, at the Field Station.

The developments of greatest potential importance to ICRAF's medium- and long-term future, however, were external ones. At a midterm meeting in Berlin in May, members of the CGIAR decided to review several so-called non-associated centres, including ICRAF, in 1989-90 in view of possible CGIAR membership. ICRAF's donor support group, board chairman and the chairmen of the CGIAR and TAC agreed in subsequent discussion that ICRAF's regular quinquennial review scheduled for mid-1989, would serve as the basis for a TAC/CGIAR assessment of ICRAF's candidacy. This was in my mind as I contemplated the possibility that 1988 could be our last normal year.

Another exciting external development is the growing communication, collaboration and sense of unity of purpose between seven of the non-associated international centres working on such farming-system, resource-management issues as soil management and fertility (IBSRAM and IFDC), water and water-based resources (IIMI and ICLARM), insects (ICIPE), and trees and shrubs (ICRAF and IUFRO). Senior management and board members from all seven institutes, as well as from the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Minnesota, USA, met four times during the year.

One cloud appeared on the horizon in 1988—the increasing operational problems created by a serious limitation of unrestricted core funds. Ironically, this was an outgrowth of two fundamentally positive developments: our success in launching collaborative research programmes in Africa and a burgeoning interest in agroforestry in both developed and developing countries.

With the Southern and Eastern Africa AFRENAs in full swing, the Cameroon national programme already two years old, an AFRENA programme in the Sudano-Sahelian zone plus national projects in Ethiopia and Ghana planned for 1989, ICRAFs capacity to provide efficient scientific, administrative and communications backup to the AFRENA programmes was stretched to its limit. Though all of these projects and programmes are specifically donor funded, these funds do not cover the total costs of support from headquarters. Few donors are prepared to include a realistic overhead level in their projects and thus scarce core-funding resources must increasingly be allocated to service special projects.

The rapidly growing general interest in agroforestry, meanwhile, has had a marked impact in the form of increased demands for information, advice, training and other forms of collaboration. This rising pressure can easily be quantified. Between 1986 and 1988, written requests to ICRAF for information increased more than 100 per cent annually. Where 350 visitors toured our Machakos field station in 1986,1,416 visited in 1988. Similarly, me number of applicants for our regular, three-week course, Agroforestry Research for Development, increased from 108 in 1986 to 306 in 1988. A much longer list of indications of mounting demand for ICRAF's services could easily be compiled, all reflecting the same trend. In fact, there is no better reflection of the global interest in agroforestry than the list of demands made on ICRAF.

Most of these demands have to be met from ICRAF's core scientific and information resources in such forms as professional staff time and information, documentation and publishing costs. Overall, core resources rose by 35 per cent in absolute dollars from 1986 to 1988, but pressure on these resources roughly tripled in the same period. Expressed another way, demand at ICRAF has grown 10 times faster than resources. Ambitious plans, for example to develop the Information and Communications Division, are intended to respond more efficiently to requests from development, extension, training, education and scientific institutions. However, if the core funding situation does not improve significantly in 1989, these plans will have to be postponed.

Thus, because of highly successful collaborative programmes and a rapid increase in demand for information and advisory services, we are in the paradoxical situation of having to slow down the very programmes that support these activities. It is my hope that the problem of limited core funds can be overcome in 1989, to allow us to meet the challenges of the 1990s in the same dynamic and creative way that has characterized ICRAF in the past.

Dr Bjorn O. Lundgren
Director-General