Increasing agricultural productivity and food security will require new and improved technologies, and their broad dissemination and agricultural research and development (R&D) institutions are the channel through which this will occur. Considerable empirical evidence indicates high rates of return from agricultural R&D investments, making agricultural research a cost-effective way for goverments to accelerate agricultural development. But despite the mass of evidence pointing to agricultural development as a priority, growth in agricultural research investments in SSA has stagnated over the past two decades.