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Across the three countries, CIALCA operates in ten ‘mandate areas’, which represent reasonably similar terrains in terms of agro-ecology, poverty profiles and ease of access to markets. Mandate areas each have an estimated population of between 300,000 and 1.2 million people and are subdivided into multiple ‘action sites’ and ‘satellite sites’. In action sites, CIALCA and its partners devise and test–jointly with farmers–promising agricultural technologies. The translation of the logic of the Consortium’s structure from paper into reality is not straightforward. With three IARCs implementing project subcomponents in three countries, managing effective communication can be a challenge. Yet the segmented nature of the Consortium also has clear benefits, particularly in terms of being more adaptable and responsive to the unique institutional and partnership landscape in each country (Cox 2011).