Distribution (density) of poor livestock keepers based on the international US$2.00/day poverty line in 2010 (published in a research brief by J Otte and R Leslie, Animal Health and Production Commission for Asia and the Pacific [APHCA], Jan 2013). ‘. . . [A]mong largely agrarian economies, which are home to the majority of the world’s … Continue reading »
Bill Gates visits a site of the East African Dairy Development project, which is funded by his foundation; researchers based in Nairobi at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a CGIAR centre, provide technical and other backstopping to this project, which is led by Heifer International (USA) (photo on Flickr by EADD). ‘Investing in agriculture … Continue reading »
Calestous Juma, a Kenyan agricultural and biotechnology expert and professor at Harvard University, gave the keynote presentation at the 2011 launch of Bio-Innovate, at ILRI’s Nairobi campus (photo credit: ILRI). Biotechnology and genetic engineering have the potential to do for agriculture what mobile technology has done for the communications sector in Africa, a renowned Harvard … Continue reading »
Ethel Makila writes in New Agriculturalist about an African fund that is leading to breakthroughs and opening new frontiers in the continent’s biosciences research (photo: ILRI/David White). This month (Mar 2013), New Agriculturalist features an article on the Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund. This is a fund that is managed by a state-of-the-art biosciences initiative located … Continue reading »
The Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers project is coming to an end. IPMS aimed to transform agricultural productivity and rural development in Ethiopia through market-oriented agricultural development. Project staff worked with the Ethiopian Government to try new and innovative approaches and technologies. The team worked to achieve this objective through four main … Continue reading »
Fisherwoman, by B Prabha, 1960 (via Blake Gopnik’s Daily Pic in the Daily Beast). Whether female scientists will want to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March may depend on how far they look back in time. Things have changed, and if you talk in terms of decades, there are considerable victories to cheer about. … Continue reading »
The Humidtropics research program held a Strategic Research Theme (SRT) Meeting from 5 to 8 February, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. The main objective of this meeting was to develop a research framework for each of the SRTs. After the meeting, the five SRT Leaders were interviewed. We asked Alan Duncan, ILRI focal point for the program … Continue reading »
The first Bio Innovate regional scientific conference (25-27 February 2013) ended last week with a focus on next steps and ‘big actions’ to come. On the last day, participants worked on three different strands: Crop productivity improvement and climate change adaptation Environmental management technologies Innovation incubation and value addition. The groups pondered bottlenecks in the enabling … Continue reading »
The third Dialogue on Ethiopian Agriculture with the theme “Agricultural Research for National Development in the Face of Climate Change and Food Security” will take place on March 9 and 10, 2013 at Haramaya University. The Dialogue aims to provide a platform to deliberate on policy issues and strategies pertaining to agricultural education, research, technology … Continue reading »
Although livestock play a central role in rural development in West Africa, traditional livestock systems are in general characterized by high mortality rates, low reproductive rates and low offtake rates. Furthermore, the presence of trypanosome-infected tsetse flies in the subhumid and humid areas seriously holds back the potential for livestock production. The region’s endemic ruminant … Continue reading »
