Agricultural research for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has thoroughly changed over the past half century, a change that was driven by its own experiences while seeking solutions to the constraints of Africa's agricultural production, as well as by external factors, including priorities of the donor community and African countries themselves, climate change, urbanisation and food price surges. In its first 25 years, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) remained the institute as originally conceived with problems of food production tackled through basic and applied research, and its results and products, once considered ready for dissemination, handed over to extension services. Today, IITA has become an entirely different institute, in the methods and content of its soil and soil fertility research, as well as its physical set-up, and would probably be barely recognised by its founders. The conclusions and lessons learned have validity beyond IITA and can enrich future soil and soil fertility research for smallholder farming, in particular in SSA.