Category Archives: Kenya

Africa / Animal Diseases / Biotechnology / Cattle / Film and video / ILRI / Indigenous Breeds / Kenya / Research / UK / Zoonotic Diseases

‘New science’ is ‘networked science’: The data-crunching workflows and pipelines behind a recent gene discovery

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The single-celled parasite Trypanosoma brucei (appearing in blue), which causes sleeping sickness in humans and trypanosomiasis in livestock, amongst the red blood cells of its mammalian host (photo credit: Parasite Museum website). Having been domesticated in Africa some 8,000 or more years ago, the N’Dama, the most ancient of African cattle breeds, has had time to … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Products / Dairying / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / Livestock / Markets / Rwanda / Uganda

Dairy farming in East Africa: Key economic performance indicators

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This brief from the East Africa Dairy Development Project highlights key results of a baseline survey of the economic performance analysis of dairy farms in project sites in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. The focus is on production and marketing aspects to establish a benchmark against which future economic performances of the project beneficiaries will be … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Animal Breeding / Dairying / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / Rwanda / Uganda

Constraints to the use of artificial insemination services for dairying in East Africa

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This brief from the East Africa Dairy Development Project highlights key results of a baseline survey to analyze the level of preference for and use of artificial insemination (AI) in different project sites, and identifying constraints or problems hindering the optimal use of the service and possible solutions. Download the paper The East Africa Dairy … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Diseases / Biotechnology / Cattle / Disease Control / East Africa / Epidemiology / ILRI / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Sudan / Uganda / Vaccines

Beating plague: Rinderpest is the second disease to be eradicated from the earth

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ILRI veterinary epidemiologist Jeff Mariner presenting his research at a meeting of the World Animal Health Organisation (OIE) (photo credit: OIE). A disease that has devastated the planet for millennia has been eradicated. An international campaign has wiped the cattle plague rinderpest off the face of the earth. ‘For centuries, a disease has ravaged the … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Feeding / Cattle / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / Rwanda / Uganda

East Africa dairy development: Animal feeds and feeding practices

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This brief from the East Africa Dairy Development Project highlights key results of a baseline survey that was carried out to provide information on cattle production systems and current feeding practices in smallholder households in selected sites in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Download the paper The East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project is implemented by … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Animal Diseases / Animal Health / Animal Products / Dairying / East Africa / ILRI / Kenya / Livestock / Rwanda / Uganda

Livestock disease challenges and gaps in the delivery of animal health services in East Africa

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This brief from the East Africa Dairy Development Project highlights key results of a baseline survey to assess gaps in the delivery of animal health services in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Specifically, the survey assessed the main animal health problems; preventive and curative measures used to control animal diseases; livestock farmers’ access to veterinary and … Continue reading →

Drought / Food Security / Kenya / North America / USA

Improve US food aid by adding animal-source protein–Oxfam

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An undernourished child in Kenya drinks store-bought ‘maziwa lala’ (sour milk) (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). Eric Muñoz, a policy adviser for Oxfam America, blogs in the Guardian about a new report that takes a hard look at the commodities the US uses to respond to disaster and food insecurity, such as is unfolding in the Horn of … Continue reading →

Africa / Asia / Caribbean / China / Egypt / Food Safety / Food Security / India / Indonesia / Kenya / Laos / Latin America / Livelihoods / Malawi / Nutrition / Pigs / Poultry / South Africa

Do a billion people really go to bed hungry? Or is a television more important than food?

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Foods of Khulungira Village, in central Malawi: Fish stew (nsomba zophika), boiled maize (chimanga chophika), mixed beans with salt and oil (nyemba zophika), dried mushrooms with groundnuts (bowa wofutsa), pumpkin leaves with pumpkin blossoms and potatoes (nkhwani wophatikiza ndi maungu anthete ndi kachewere wophika) and boiled eggs with tomato, onions, oil and salt (mazira ophika ndi … Continue reading →

CCAFS / CGIAR / Climate Change / Crop-Livestock / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / Somalia / Vulnerability

New initiative to support agro-pastoralists in Africa’s Horn

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Coastweek and Xinhua have published accounts of a new East African dryland food production initiative. The initiative will work towards securing the agro-pastoral livelihoods of poor livestock keepers in the region. ‘Scientists have launched a new initiative to help boost smallholder farmers’ resilience to drought in the Horn of Africa’s drylands. ‘The new initiative supported by … Continue reading →

Burundi / Central Africa / East Africa / Ethiopia / Food Security / Kenya / Rwanda / Somalia / Uganda

As pump prices rise, so do the costs of basic foodstuffs across eastern and central Africa

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Skyrocketing fuel and food prices are making Kenyans suffer; an undernourished child at the Kenya Coast drinks store-bought ‘maziwa lala’ (sour milk) (photo credit: ILRI/Elsworth). A policy brief published earlier this year by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reports the following. ‘Three years after the 2007–08 food crisis, the prices of basic food items … Continue reading →