CARI‘s New Vision and Mission: The Vision of CARI is “A commercially-oriented agricultural sector propelled by research, technology transfer, innovations, knowledge and approaches that will contribute to an improved quality of life for all Liberians” while its Mission is “ To contribute to increased productivity, commercialization and competitiveness of the agricultural sector through adaptive research and promotion of knowledge, informationand technologies that respond to clients’ demands and opportunities towards the attainment of food security, poverty alleviation, income generation and job creation.”
The Current Vision, Mission and Management Structure of CARI
According to documents sourced from CARI and USAID Liberia country office, the institute‘s Vision is:
“Make agriculture business”
Its mission is:
“To undertake applied and adaptive research for enhanced productivity of food, feed, fiber, and other agricultural products in Liberia for the attainment of food security, poverty alleviation, income generation and job creation”
The mission statement reasonably reflects the purpose for CARI‘s existence and defines the ultimate benefits to be realized by its services. However, it does not clearly stipulate how the institute‘s services will be rendered. CARI‘s mandate connotes that it will collaborate with all actors, and will strive to develop a national agricultural research system capable of generating an innovation system for agricultural development in Liberia which has led to the call from many stakeholders and donors for the revitalization of CARI.
Currently, CARI is managed by a Director-General who reports directly to the Minister of Agriculture in a centralized coordination system. With a complement of 47 professional staff mostly at junior level with only 1 PhD, 18 MSc, 24 BSc and 2 BAs. The rest of the staff is low-level contractors and security staff (180). CARI is organized in six programs with all reporting directly to the Director-General. Unlike many other national agricultural research institutes in Africa and elsewhere in the world, CARI does not have a Board of Governors nor does it have a functional Technical Advisory Committee.
