Below are some highlighted remarks made by Vicki Wilde, director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), based in Nairobi, Kenya, at a presentation she made at the sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week (AASW6), organized by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), in Accra, Ghana, 15-20 July 2013. A full transcript of … Continue reading
Category Archives: Research
Next steps for climate change social learning initiative – implementation, incubation, partnering, testing, scaling…
Climate change is a wicked problem, it requires wicked solutions, not business-as-usual. The CGIAR research program on climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS) recognised this when they joined up with International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and other partners to look at the potential of social learning and communication approaches to support decision-making on climate change adaptation … Continue reading
Experts set minimum standards for gender equity in agricultural research for development
Photo credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer. Last week, while leaders of CGIAR research program were meeting with donors and partners in Montpellier, France, to discuss progress and directions for their programs, gender specialists in agricultural research for development were also meeting in this Mediterranean coastal city. The gender experts came from the CGIAR Consortium, centres and programs, … Continue reading
Of platforms and tables, cows and chillies: Scrutinizing numbers in Togo opens worlds of new ideas to explore
Early this month, Jo Cadilhon, an agricultural economist with ILRI’s research program on Policy, Trade and Value Chains, spent four days in Lomé, Togo, facilitating a workshop for a project on ‘Resilience of smallholder agriculture through dairy and market gardening value chains’. In this blog post, he tells how the analysis of data during the … Continue reading
Huge scope for livestock sector to reduce world poverty–New research brief from Asia commission
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
‘Nothing improves an economy as efficiently as agriculture’–Bill Gates to US Senate
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
GMOs good for Africa–Calestous Juma, Kenyan biotechnology expert and Harvard professor
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
Science fund opens new agricultural research frontiers in Africa
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
Commodities, innovation and action research in Ethiopia: Livestock live talk at ILRI on 27 March 2013
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
ILRI projects in Ethiopia: Getting the science right
Taking advantage of the presence of John McIntire, Deputy Director General for Integrated Sciences on the ILRI Addis campus, a group of ILRI scientists and program managers (Iain Wright, Dirk Hoekstra, Azage Tegegne, Peter Thorne, Alan Duncan, Barry Shapiro and John McIntire) recently discussed the suite of projects that involve ILRI in Ethiopia: Improving the … Continue reading