This is the Report of an External Panel appointed to review the programme and management of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The membership of the Panel and their backgrounds are listed in Annex I.
This Fourth External Review of CIAT was commissioned in 1993, with the initial phase and country visits planned for late 1994 and the main phase for early 1995. The full Terms of Reference for the Review are detailed in Annex II. In the context of the TAC Standing Committee on Reviews search for reduced costs, this Fourth Review of CIAT, a complex Centre, consisted of a Chair, a small Panel of four members, three part time consultants, two resource persons and a Panel Secretary.
A consultant attended the July 1994 CIAT Board Meeting in Cali, and the first phase, with Dr Grant Scobie as Chair, was implemented in September/October 1994. It included one week at CIAT Headquarters during which the Panel met with all levels of CIAT staff to solicit their views. CIAT presented the Panel with excellent documentation on all aspects of its operations. A list of the documents provided to the Panel is in Annex IV. After this week the Panel, consultants and resource people divided into small groups for visits to countries, regional organisations and IARC'S with which CIAT collaborates. A full list of institutions and individuals visited is included as Annex III. Further information was gathered by the Panel through two survey questionnaires, one circulated to CIAT staff and the other to NARS collaborators.
In the interim, before the main phase, Dr Scobie withdrew as Chair of the Review, the result of a conflict of interest when he was named to the shortlist for the vacant post of CIAT Director General. Mr Declan Walton agreed to step in at short notice as Panel Chair for the remainder of the Review. This allowed the original timetable for the main phase, January/February 1995, to be kept. En route to the main phase the Panel Secretary, Dr Vivian Timon, was taken ill, and Dr Mike Collinson, a resource person for the Review, took his place. The main phase was implemented, and the Review concluded, without further incident.
The Panel cannot claim to know everything about all of CIAT's work. Given the events of the past five years, some aspects inevitably received much more attention than others. The Panel believes that it has focussed its efforts where these were most needed, and that it has responded to its Terms of Reference. It is the Panel's hope that the report will be useful to the TAC, the CGIAR and of course, to CIAT itself.
