Developing sustainable, productive agriculture is critical to reducing poverty in Africa, but new technologies that farmers have used in places such as Brazil have only recently reached Africa. Seeing the natural partnership potential between Brazil and Africa, the World Bank collaborated with Brazil's agricultural research entity, Embrapa, and the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) to create the Africa-Brazil Agricultural Innovation Marketplace to speed African uptake of agricultural innovations. "Agriculture is the basis for further economic and social improvements," said Wagner Rossi, Minister of Agriculture of Brazil. "This is especially true for Africa, which is in a quick modernization process, and countries are organizing themselves to excel in the sector." The Marketplace is bringing numerous scientists and policymakers from Africa and Brazil together—as many as 250 by August, 2012—to identify solutions to agricultural problems and help fund promising projects. In its first year in 2011, the Marketplace helped raise the awareness of African government officials about agricultural innovations and built technical skills among African agriculture experts. More concretely, in 2011, the Marketplace competition funded 10 innovative projects in Africa. The success of the initiative has drawn international attention, and private foundations1 and international development organizations will back another 15 projects by August 2012 and a further 10 to 15 projects in 2013. "The Marketplace is an effort to move from retail South-South collaboration, where each time we are facilitating one arrangement at a time, to a wholesale approach, where we put in place a model that will allow many different collaborations to be effective," said Willem Janssen, Lead Agriculture Specialist with the World Bank. For more information about this Knowledge Exchange, please visit: http://wbi.worldbank.org/sske/result-story/2610