Our foundation is betting on chickens. Alongside partners throughout sub-Saharan Africa, we are working to create sustainable market systems for poultry. It’s especially important for these systems to make sure farmers can buy birds that have been properly vaccinated and are well suited to the local growing conditions. Our goal: to eventually help 30 percent of the rural families in sub-Saharan Africa raise improved breeds of vaccinated chickens, up from just 5 percent now. . . . Continue reading
Category Archives: CRPs
CGIAR Research Programs
Local greenhouse gas estimates needed for local adaptation to climate change, say Kenya and Uganda
On 3–4 May 2016, policymakers from climate change departments of Kenya and Uganda met with scientists from CCAFS and ILRI for discussions on development of regional greenhouse gas inventories. Continue reading
Livestock are coming to the fore of sustainable development to-do lists
Analysis published in Nature Climate Change estimates that livestock could account for up to half of the mitigation potential of the global agricultural, forestry and land-use sectors, which are the second largest source of emissions globally, after the energy sector. Continue reading
On more rigorous informed consent in One Health cross-cultural livestock research
This paper outlines two studies on informed consent, for research identifying diseases of animal and human importance, within smallholder livestock value chains. Continue reading
Milk production: A nutritional buffer for households in times of conflict and other stress
A new discussion paper from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) recommends that livestock-oriented policies to improve child nutrition be designed to mitigate the harmful impacts of conflicts or related events, such as climate change or natural disasters, and that doing so will lead to healthier, more resilient children and communities. Continue reading
Insurance helps Kenyan livestock herders cope with drought
‘The index-based insurance program is run by the Kenya-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and funded by the British, U.S. and Australian governments and the European Union. The donors subsidize the cover to make it affordable for pastoralists. Continue reading
First non-travel-associated MERS in Africa–Researchers report past MERS-CoV infections in two Kenyans
Researchers at the Nairobi, Kenya-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and at the University of Bonn Medical Center in Germany have found evidence of MERS-CoV antibodies in archived blood samples from two of 1,122 Kenyan livestock handlers, collected between 2013 and 2014. Continue reading
ILRI biosciences hub and vaccine development named global public goods by heads of BMGF and DFID
Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and Nick Hurd, international development minister for Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), argue in the Guardian’s Global Development blog this month that the world needs to put science at the heart of development. Two of the examples of success that they cite are initiatives of ILRI. Continue reading
Unpacking transdisciplinary research (the REALLY hard science)
The following excerpt is the beginning of a candid and thoughtful article by Ian Scoones, of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), at Sussex University, about an international symposium, One Health for the Real World: zoonoses, ecosystems and wellbeing, that took place at the Zoological Society of London last week (17–18 Mar 2016). Continue reading
What is ‘complexity thinking’ and what does it have to do with development/aid?
book by Burns and Worsley (available in hardback, paperback and eBook formats) will be of interest to all those looking to make a greater difference in international development (that is, in development parlance, to take solutions to scale). ‘Navigating Complexity in International Development: Facilitating Sustainable Change at Scale’, published by Practical Action Publishing, Oct 2015, 198 pages. Continue reading