Successful development requires effective human and institutional capacity, enabling environments, and the generation and free-flow of knowledge and information. Often the building of human and institutional capacity fails because efforts do not appropriately connect to the developing country environment, nor are they sustained long enough to support effective change. The Collaborative Research Support Programs (CRSPs) were designed in the 1970s as a joint effort by USAID and US land grant universities to address this problem. The model has evolved over the years to be a collaborative between developing and developed country institutions. These ventures involve a wide range of different partners (US higher education institutions, developing country universities, governmental and non –governmental organizations, and the private sector) with a long term-commitment to relationships that build human and institutional capacity, with a problem solving focus.

The 9 CRSPs, which include over 50 US universities and colleges, cover a range of agricultural and natural resource topics. Each CRSP runs a series of competitively bid projects to solve key issues facing development in the focus area. The projects are long-term commitments to research-based solutions, which generate new knowledge and technologies that address constraints to development for the poor. In so doing, research is conducted by graduate students (and some undergraduates) that solve components of the larger development problem. Instead of the traditional training programs that remove students from their countries for research and training, the CRSP model focuses them in their own countries. Because their projects are part of a larger development problem, their research is part of an existing network of local and regional participating scientists, enabling them to build and maintain their careers within the context of their homeland. As a result, the brain drain effect is minimized. The long–term nature of the projects also provides support for the young scientist when they enter their countries’ research institutions, effectively building human and institutional capacity.