CGIAR and Jakala

CGIAR is a partnership of 13 international agricultural research centers working to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis. Its 10,000-strong scientific workforce spans more than 80 countries, yet its digital presence told a different story. Three years ago, CGIAR was running more than 500 active and inactive websites across eight content management systems, with no shared templates, no shared governance, and centers competing for the same donor attention.

In this session, CGIAR digital transformation specialist Mulugeta Bayeh and Jakala Head of Sales Joffrey Jost share how they rebuilt that fragmented estate as a single platform on Acquia Site Factory. Rather than 500 separate website problems, CGIAR now manages one platform, one support plan, and one shared code base. CG Space, the organization's open access repository, surfaces 150,000 knowledge products, and an integration with Microsoft Entra ID makes tens of thousands of scientists searchable from a single location for the first time.

The pair are candid about how they got there. They replaced the traditional vendor contract with a genuine partnership framework, a shared backlog, and shared accountability, which produced 35% faster delivery and zero duplicated effort. Watch to hear their hard-won lessons on how constraints sharpen priorities, why partnership beats procurement, and how to build sustainable, scalable, mission-critical digital infrastructure on a limited budget.