As Lewis Carroll famously observed: If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. This reminds us that no institution can aspire to sustainable financing without a clear vision of what it wants to do. I have been involved in scientific research, particularly agricultural research, for more than four decades. As a researcher, member of science academies, director general of the Africa Rice Center/CGIAR, and Senegal’s minister in charge of agricultural research, I have obser