Résumé
Research in cacao genetics plays a crucial role for the sustainability of the cacao sector. Effective management and improvement of cacao genetic resources relies on the exchange of resources such as genetic material, data or knowledge between different countries and across continents. It often involves global collaboration among a range of diverse actors interested in cacao genetic resources but with different capacities, aspirations and motivations. The cacao genetic community has already engaged in large-scale research collaboration in the past especially through the international CFC/ICCO/Bioversity projects from 1998 to 2010 and a new collaborative initiative is currently being discussed, the Collaborative Framework for Cacao Evaluation CFCE. This paper aims at understanding the opportunities and constraints for the formation process of collaborative inter-organisational initiative in cacao genetic research. It identifies the range of challenges to be addressed by the cacao community to make more informed choices about definition of common objectives, process and governance structure in establishing a collaborative initiative. This paper draws from an analysis of a survey conducted in April 2016 on a sample of 391 people involved in cacao genetic resources related activities, a bibliographic analysis as well as an in-depth evaluation and interviews carried out on the CFC/ICCO/Bioversity projects, drawing out the key lessons learnt and recommendations. Preliminary results show that existing barriers can potentially play against global collaboration and undermine a perceived sense of convergent interests. However, these constraints are more than counterbalanced by the existence of institutions that have the ability to support global collaboration and by pre-existing social relationships, including the CFC/ICCO/Bioversity project, that reflect a sense of strategic interdependency among potential participants actors. Therefore, the community's capacity to build on the awareness of the benefits of global collaboration and to agree on global objectives will depend on its ability to overcome tensions created by geographical distances, disciplinary divides or differences in capacity and to design a collaborative framework that will take advantage of existing converging forces while minimizing the effects of diverging forces. (Résumé d'auteur)