16 June 2026, Africa: For development and research organizations, the challenge is no longer only to generate promising innovations. It is to understand whether, where, how and with whom those innovations can deliver lasting impact at scale.
That was the central message of the ninth Science of Scaling webinar, co-hosted by CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact program and Wageningen University & Research on 2 June 2026. Bringing together 100 participants from Africa, Europe, South Asia and Latin America, the session explored how scaling science is moving beyond technology adoption toward a deeper concern with systems, demand, readiness and responsibility.
This shift sits at the heart of Scaling for Impact, CGIAR’s program for converting proven innovations into financed, large-scale delivery by aligning science with government programs, international financial institutions, market actors and other partners. As CGIAR Scaling for Impact Director Tim Krupnik noted, scaling is not automatic. It requires systematic, deliberate and adaptive approaches that respond to changing conditions while increasing returns on research investment and benefits for society.
The first theme was the importance of asking better questions before trying to scale. Stefan Partelow of the University of Bonn challenged participants to be more precise about what they mean by adoption, diffusion, scaling up and scaling out. Most scaling, he argued, ultimately seeks some form of behavior change. The practical questions therefore become: what exactly is being scaled, through which mechanisms, among whom, and in what system?
For Scaling for Impact, this is where tools such as Scaling Readiness become especially important. Rather than assuming a successful pilot is ready to expand, Scaling Readiness helps teams diagnose whether an innovation has the necessary evidence, partnerships, incentives, legitimacy and delivery arrangements to move further. This matters because many innovations stall in the “valley of death”, unable to secure the resources, networks and credibility required to reach users at scale. Recent collaboration between CGIAR and Enabel, Belgium’s development agency, used Innovation Packaging and Scaling Readiness workshops to help innovations like ABALOBI MONITOR in Tanzania and Tap & Track in Uganda move beyond proof of concept toward clearer, partner-driven pathways to scale.
A second theme was demand. Partelow noted that many sectors still know too little about the social systems in which innovations are expected to operate. Without that intelligence, scaling efforts risk addressing symptoms rather than causes, or pushing solutions into systems that are not ready to sustain them. This resonates strongly with Scaling for Impact’s emphasis on embedding research and scaling efforts within regional, national and local innovation systems so that CGIAR innovations respond to stakeholder priorities and delivery realities.
Blessing Mhlanga of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) brought this systems perspective into sharp practical focus through his work on agricultural mechanization in Southern Africa. Farmers, he argued, do not adopt technologies in isolation. In the case of mechanization, the tractor is only one part of the story. Farmers also need credit, spare parts, maintenance services, trained operators, and viable business models. The real innovation is not simply a machine, but the delivery architecture that allows mechanization to function in context.
This distinction led Mhlanga and colleagues to separate “innovation bundling” from “innovation packaging”. Bundling identifies the complementary elements an innovation needs to work. Packaging turns those elements into an operational model that can be delivered, financed, governed, and adapted. Applying CGIAR’s Innovation Packaging and Scaling Readiness and related System Readiness frameworks in Zambia helped reveal that scaling mechanization was less about tractor delivery than building the ecosystem around tractor services.
A third theme was responsibility. Cees Leeuwis of Wageningen University traced how scaling thinking has evolved from adoption and diffusion studies in the 1960s, to innovation systems thinking in the 1980s and 1990s, and more recently toward system innovation. That trajectory helped shape Wageningen’s collaboration with CGIAR on responsible scaling from around 2015, including contributions to methodologies such as Scaling Readiness and GenderUp.
Responsible scaling matters because innovations can generate unintended consequences. Partelow warned that an innovation can be technically effective and scalable while still producing inequitable outcomes. Mhlanga similarly emphasized that success should not be measured by adoption rates alone, but also by equity, resilience, environmental well-being, and the capacity for continuous adaptation.
The discussion reinforced a final lesson for the Scaling for Impact agenda: scaling is often constrained less by technology than by institutions, incentives and organization. Participants noted that many organizations embrace scaling concepts in theory while continuing to prioritize short project cycles and immediate outputs. Sustainable scaling requires engaging private actors, public institutions and local partners from the outset, while strengthening the systems that will sustain innovations after projects end.
Webinar participants also explored the role of private-sector actors in supporting scaling processes, including how complementary services, strategic partnerships, and effective delivery mechanisms can strengthen adoption and sustainability. There was also discussion on how investors and development partners can better support adaptive and context-responsive scaling processes, rather than focusing solely on predefined targets and outcomes.
The webinar closed with an insight from Mhlanga: “smallholder farmers adopt systems, not technologies.” For CGIAR, the same is true of scaling itself. Enduring impact will come not from spreading innovations faster but from delivery architectures that allow them to thrive.”
Global Agriculture is an independent international media platform covering agri-business, policy, technology, and sustainability. For editorial collaborations, thought leadership, and strategic communications, write to pr@global-agriculture.com
