This paper describes the mechanisms employed by ROCARIZ, the West and Central Africa Rice Research and Development Network to overcome tradition of national centralised research. ROCARIZ broke the mold by structuring itself around multi-country, issue-driven ‘task forces’ that decentralize the international research agenda to NARS. The task force mechanism puts NARS in the lead in all aspects of the research cycle including idea generation, priority-setting, fundraising, work planning, building collaboration and teams, project execution, monitoring, evaluation and reporting.