From the original post published by CGIAR’s CapSha
For 30 years, the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) has built partnerships around bean research, markets and delivery across Africa. Its anniversary offered an opportunity to explore which parts of its experience could work for other crops, value chains and regions?
This theme shaped discussions at the PABRA@30 Celebration Event, held on 31 August 2026 at the Kigali Convention Centre in Rwanda as part of the AFSF 2026. The Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) marked three decades of partnership, science, and impact and invited the world and specifically Africa, to look beyond beans.
The CGIAR Capacity Sharing Accelerator (CapSha) played a key role during the event, facilitating a pivotal session titled “Beyond Beans,” exploring how PABRA’s proven demand-led and corridor approach can be adapted to other agricultural value chains and regions.
Improved beans significantly reduce food insecurity
The DIIVA/SPIA programme and the CGIAR Independent Science and Partnership Council, through independent impact assessments, found substantial benefits from the improved bean varieties. The assessment studies found that improved varieties were associated with substantial yield gains, ranging from 43% to 82% across two countries assessed, Rwanda and Uganda. The analysis further estimated that, without improved bean varieties, food insecurity would have been 16 percentage points higher in Rwanda and about 2 percentage points higher in Uganda. These results underpin PABRA’s remarkable story. Over 30 years, the alliance released 624 improved bean varieties, reached 46 million farmers (58% of them women), and built a network spanning 31 countries.
But beyond the beans, the real lesson is about mechanisms or models of working.
PABRA connects researchers, seed companies, farmers, traders, processors, and policymakers into a single, market-driven ecosystem. The model built on demand-led breeding, demand-led seed systems, the corridor approach, and off-taker-led platforms has already proven its flexibility and agility to adapt to value chain actors.