Wednesday, April 23, 2014 (Lima, Peru) – CIP’s Strategy and Corporate Plan for the next decade was announced today by CIP Director General Barbara Wells and the CIP Board of Trustees. The plan consolidates CIP’s focus to six strategic objectives. Three strategic objectives are development oriented to deliver shorter term solutions to food security by going to scale using potato and sweetpotato innovations that CIP has specialized in over its history. Two strategic objectives address upstream research for development areas with a focus on longer term innovations to address anticipated food security challenges that will inevitably evolve as a result of climate change. A sixth strategic objective focuses on biodiversity conservation and use that underlines the organization’s continuing commitment to protect and utilize the world potato and sweetpotato collections.
“We feel a heightened sense of urgency to deliver results to our end users more quickly than ever before,” says CIP Director General Barbara Wells.
Wells explains that CIP is focused on delivering real results in the field within the next generation and the plan facilitates this by efficiently using resources to maximize impact through the scaling-up of innovations. Wells also notes that the plan’s new focus includes a more sustained emphasis on gender issues.
“The best way to enhance CIP’s impact over the next 10 years is to assume greater responsibility for putting the results of our research into the hands of smallholder farmers while maintaining our identity and core business as a science-based organization”, says CIP Deputy Director of Research and Development, Oscar Ortiz. “We will work with existing and new networks of partners to develop and transform science-based solutions to get positive outcomes and extend the impact of our work.”
The plan is based in the emergence of a post-2015 development framework; evolving regional and national frameworks that empower countries to lead their own development; CGIAR reform, with an expanded focus that explicitly addresses food and nutritional security; and recognition of the rich and diverse partnership landscape.
A summary of the CIP Strategy Objectives for 2014-2023 is available online at www.cipotato.org.
The International Potato Center, known by its Spanish acronym CIP, was founded in 1971 as a root and tuber research-for-development institution delivering sustainable solutions to the pressing world problems of hunger, poverty, malnutrition and the degradation of natural resources. CIP is a global center, with headquarters in Lima, Peru and projects in 30 developing countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
CIP is part of the CGIAR Consortium, a global partnership that unites organizations engaged in research for a food secure future. CGIAR research is dedicated to reducing rural poverty, increasing food security, improving human health and nutrition, and ensuring more sustainable management of natural resources. Donors include individual countries, major foundations, and international entities.