Tag Archives: Cornell University

Economist, partners clinch USAID award for drought insurance
Article / Award / CCAFS / Drought / Drylands / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Interview / Kenya / Pastoralism / Pro-Poor Livestock / Rangelands / Resilience / SLS / Staff / Vulnerability

Economist, partners clinch USAID award for drought insurance

Posted on by • Leave a comment

A Cornell development economist and his partners in the USAID-funded BASIS Assets and Market Access Innovation Lab have won an international award for developing a form of livestock insurance that has already proved itself in pilot testing. Now that it is scaling up, the insurance could help hundreds of thousands of African herders stave off poverty in times of drought. Continue reading →

Article / CCAFS / Drought / Drylands / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Rangelands / SLS / Vulnerability

Ethiopian insurance company to pay Borena livestock herders compensations ahead of drought season

Posted on by • Leave a comment

Oromia Insurance Company (OIC), the lone index based insurer of livestock in the country, has launched a new scheme that will entail paying compensation for livestock ahead of the drought season instead of after, as it was originally done. Continue reading →

CCAFS / Drought / Drylands / East Africa / Event / ILRI / ILRIComms / Insurance / Kenya / Launch / Pastoralism / PIL

Takaful, ILRI payout ‘sharia-compliant’ insurance to drought-suffering livestock herders in Wajir

Posted on by • Leave a comment

Shamsa Kosar, a beneficiary of Takaful livestock insurance payouts made in Wajir, northern Kenya, in March 2014. This novel insurance was made possible by an ILRI index-based livestock insurance research project in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Riccardo Gangale). ‘Takaful Insurance will pay livestock farmers about Sh500,000 for losses incurred during the December … Continue reading →

Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Film and video / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability

Livestock insurance for the Horn: Looking back in anger, forward in hope–CNN video

Posted on by • 1 Comment

A new CNN video—Protecting farmers against drought—describes the benefits of ILRI’s Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) scheme in Kenya’s Marsabit District, runtime: 5:44, 11 Jun 2012 (CNN Marketplace Africa). Watch the video     Read the transcript Some half a year after the drought that devastated large parts of the Horn of Africa broke towards the end … Continue reading →

Africa / Animal Diseases / CBPP / Disease Control / ILRI / Launch / North America / Research / USA / Vaccines

US National Science Foundation’s BREAD funds Craig Venter and ILRI to battle cattle pneumonia in Africa

Posted on by • Leave a comment

Dinner with philanthropist Bill Gates at the home of genome-czar J Craig Venter in La Jolla, California, in 2008 (photo by jurvetson on Flickr). ‘Gates asked the most astute and detailed questions about microbiology’, JCVI reports, and said, ‘DNA is the most interesting software there is.’ The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates … Continue reading →

CGIAR / Drought / Drylands / East Africa / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability

Kenyan herders cope with drought by buying livestock insurance

Posted on by • 1 Comment

Sake Dabasso Halake stands proudly in front of Equity Bank’s Marsabit branch. She smiles, clutching an envelope filled with 16,000 Kenyan shillings that she just received. It was her insurance payout for the 10 cows she lost during the drought. Photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins. Jeff Haskins, director of the Nairobi office of Burness … Continue reading →

A4NH / Agri-Health / Agriculture / Animal Diseases / Epidemiology / Film and video / Food Safety / Human Health / Research / West Africa

Veterinary scientists address human illnesses associated with livestock

Posted on by • Leave a comment

For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist, reflects on ILRI’s research in agriculture for human health and nutrition. ‘I first came to ILRI in 2002 to study livestock resistance to trypanocide drugs among livestock keepers in West Africa. We wanted to help farmers … Continue reading →

Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Food Security / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Project / Vulnerability

Remote Kenya livestock herders receive their first drought insurance payouts

Posted on by • Leave a comment

ILRI staff help local livestock herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District understand how they might benefit from a new ‘index-based’ livestock insurance policy scheme, which is providing 650 herders who paid for this insurance with their first payout this month, following the loss of forage due to a drought that hit Marsabit as well as much … Continue reading →