A Leadership & Culture Workshop Shapes the Future of Rice in Africa
27 March 2026, Africa: AfricaRice embarked on a transformative leadership journey with the launch of a five-day Leadership & Culture Workshop, bringing together managers and leaders from across the center to strengthen leadership capacity, align strategic direction, revive the team spirit and enhance operational effectiveness.
This workshop marked a pivotal step in preparing AfricaRice for the next decade, as the organization advances toward its 2026–2035 strategy and reinforces its role in driving rice self-sufficiency across Africa. By fostering shared leadership principles, collaboration, and systems thinking, AfricaRice is investing in the people and culture needed to deliver impact at scale.
In his introduction words, Dr Baboucarr Manneh, Director General AfricaRice emphasized the need to exercise an exemplary management approach in achieving the center’s goal: ‘‘What we do to transform the lives of rice value chain actors on the continent is as important as how we do it. Our future impact depends not only on what we do, but on how we lead and work together.”
Building Leadership Capacity for Organizational Impact
The first three days of the workshop focused on strengthening individual and collective leadership capabilities. Participants explored leadership styles, authentic leadership, and growth mindset practices to enhance their ability to lead with purpose and adaptability. The facilitator team from the System Organization of CGIAR placed emphasis on building inclusive teams grounded in psychological safety and ethical decision-making, ensuring that diverse perspectives are valued and leveraged.
Participants enjoyed the discussions while sharing examples of their daily challenges and successes to build collective awareness and together find contextualized and sustained solutions. They spent a great number of times working in groups on innovation, collaboration, and systems thinking, key competencies that are required to connect one department role with others and better appreciate the bigger picture for broader impact.
Rebecca Williams, Director of People & Culture shared that ‘Building strong empathetic leadership, that leads with integrity, accountability and with the values of the CGIAR front and centre is imperative to ensure that AfricaRice and the CGIAR Integrated Partnership achieves the desired impact that we all strive for’.
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