Women represent 70% of African smallholder chicken producers. Chickens can be a real way out of difficult livelihoods for these women and the households they attend to. A new project, SciDev.Net recently reported, is aiming at leveraging this potential in novel ways. Continue reading
Category Archives: Nigeria
Cassava processors visit ILRI cassava peel processing unit in Nigeria
International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) research in Nigeria has resulted in shorter drying times of cassava peels from 3 days to about six sunshine hours. Two new products (feed ingredients) have been developed and are being standardized. Continue reading
Ebola: Three unpalatable truths
The district of Kailahun, in eastern Sierra Leone, bordering Guinea, is home to this 88-bed largest Ebola treatment and isolation centre set up by Médecins Sans Frontières (photo on Flickr by ©EC/ECHO/Cyprien Fabre). This opinion piece is written by Eliza Smith ‘By now, it seems we’ve heard everything there is to hear about the mysterious … Continue reading
New analyses highlight the extent of livestock production in Africa’s drylands
Typical long-horned goats of Abergelle Amhara, Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Zerihun Sewunet). ‘Quantitative information on the importance of livestock systems in African drylands is scarce. A new study by Tim Robinson, of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and Giulia Conchedda, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), helps to redress this. The study … Continue reading
African drylands: Livestock demand and supply
ILRI’s Tim Robinson maps the changing demand for livestock products and associated changes in production that will be required to meet future demand in African drylands. Continue reading
Aflatoxins: New briefs disclose the threat to people and livestock and what research is doing about it
A damaged maize cob that, if harvested with clean cobs, can contaminate all the cobs with aflatoxins (photo credit: Joseph Atehnkeng/IITA). ‘The UN World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that billions of people in the developing world are chronically exposed to aflatoxin, a natural poison on food crops which causes cancer, impairs the immune system, inhibits … Continue reading
Estimating the financial costs of animal disease burden, morbidity and mortality in Nigeria
Nigeria’s agriculture sector generates one-third of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs two-thirds of the workforce. Its recent growth dominates Nigerian non-oil economic growth. Small-scale, semi-commercial farms, settled agricultural households and transhumant pastoralists dominate production. Livestock is the second largest agricultural subsector and features 16.43 million cattle, 34.69 million sheep, 55.15 million goats, 7.18 … Continue reading
Voices from the sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week 2013
Change mindsets, embed policymaking, make efficient use of declining biomass, engage the private sector. These and other recommendations of four participants attending the ongoing sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6) are captured in this short (2:40-minute) video. This science week, organized by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), is being held in Accra, … Continue reading
Draconian bans on urban livestock in developing countries ‘not the answer’–Guardian on ILRI report
Customers at a milk bar in Ndumbuini in Kabete, Nairobi (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu). Mark Tran in the Guardian‘s Poverty Matters Blog warns us this week not to keep chickens under our beds. On the other hand, he infers, chicken bought on the street in poor countries may be safer to eat than that from … Continue reading
Human-animal diseases are emerging in the North, have biggest costs in the South–New ILRI study
Zoonotic emerging infectious disease events (non-wild hosts). Published In report to DFID by Delia Grace et al.: Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots, ILRI, 2012 (map credit: ILRI/Delia Grace). Natasha Gilbert reports today in Nature on the ‘Cost of human-animal disease greatest for world’s poor’, noting that ‘the United States and western Europe are … Continue reading