ABSTRACT
The West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) introduced a number of new rice varieties that were fairly widely adopted for irrigated fanning, but new varieties offered for rainfed conditions were largely ignored. When the time came for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) external review of WARDA in 1983, a decision was made to look at WARDA whole with reviews covering both scientific and management aspects of the organization. In Monrovia, WARDA shared a building in a compound with the United Nations Development Program. Relocation, however, entailed decamping from Monrovia and WARDA was immediately plunged into, arguably, the touchiest site selection process that any CGIAR center has gone through. Ever since the 1983 external review, WARDA had been encouraged to pay much more attention to upland rice, that is rice grown by poor farmers under rainfed conditions usually in combination with other crops.
