Category Archives: PA

The role of research in a pro-poor dairy policy shifts in Kenya

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The role of research in a pro-poor dairy policy shift in Kenya
 
New case study highlights lessons learned from Kenya's highly successful Smallholder Dairy Project.
 
The BBC ‘Small Is Beautiful’ series recently showcased Kenya’s Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP), which won four prestigious international awards during its eight years of operation. Researchers from ILRI and the Overseas Development Institute have now documented and analysed the circumstances and key factors that contributed to the overall success of the Project. This case study document will be particularly valuable to individuals and organizations engaged in policy processes or seeking to influence pro-poor policy changes. Some of the key success factors cited in the report are:

  • Use of evidence. Wide-ranging, highly robust, and relevant evidence was instrumental in influencing policy change in Kenya’s dairy sector. ILRI and the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) collaborated on this project with the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development; the inputs of both highly reputable research institutions added to the credibility of the evidence.

 

  • Highly collaborative approach. The strong collaborative approach taken by this Project was a major factor in its success in changing policy. Much of this was underpinned by years of previous collaboration between the implementing organizations. Innovative links between the project and advocacy-focused civil society organizations (CSOs) also played a key role. Although research organizations and CSOs differ in mandates and operational modes, effective collaboration between them was achieved by developing and maintaining a shared vision. Linking with CSOs to advocate policy change was crucial to the success of this Project. These links helped the Project open new channels for influencing key individuals and groups and provided the Project with access to grassroots organizations.
  • Citizen voice and representation. The Project staff took advantage of the changing political context in Kenya, including the role of civil society and increased influence of citizens. Project staff took every opportunity to participate in meetings to communicate evidence. Indeed, the years the Project spent regularly feeding research-based information and evidence to other organizations  and stakeholders in the develoment of Kenya’s dairy industry proved highly important. Armed with credible facts, farmers were empowered to speak at a Dairy Policy Forum held at the close of the Project, in April 2005. By holding this Forum, the Project was able to gain support of politicians and other key officials.


The full report, ‘Informal Traders Lock Horns with the Formal Milk Industry: The Role of Research in Pro-Poor Dairy Policy Shift in Kenya,’ can be downloaded here.

Listen to Kenya’s Dairy Story
 

Small is Beautiful – The Kenya Dairy Story
Kenyans love their milk. Most of the 3 billion litres consumed there each year is produced by smallholders with a couple of cows, and sold house-to-house by thousands of street hawkers and doorstep milkmen. But this whole milk business was under threat. In the third edition of the One Planet series (on BBC World Service) which is sharing small business success, Susie Emmett discovers how the farmers and traders fought back to keep the milk flowing.


Listen to a recording of the BBC World Service broadcast produced by WRENmedia. (See Note below)


Note: The latest numbers

Some of the numbers quoted in this BBC World Service broadcast ‘Small is beautiful’ have been obtained from much earlier estimates. These figures, however, grossly understate the true size and extent of Kenya’s milk sector. SDP has provided recalculated figures, which more accurately reflect the picture in Kenya today.

1. Smallholder dairy farms recalculates to be 1.8 million (up from 800,000)
The estimated 800,000 smallholder farms has been widely cited for many years, during which time Kenya’s population has grown significantly. SDP recalculates the number of smallholders to be 1.8 million.

2. Milk hawkers recalculated to be 39,650 (up from 30,000)
SDP recalculates the number of small milk vendors in Kenya to be 39,650.

3. Number of dairy cattle recalculated to be 6.7 million (up from 3 million)
There are concerns about the reliability of the official cattle figures for Kenya; no livestock census has been conducted for decades and the methods used to estimate cattle numbers are imprecise. A conservative estimate of the size of the national dairy herd using detailed SDP survey data suggests that there are about 6.7 million dairy cattle (2.7 million high grade and 4 million crosses) owned by 1.8 million rural smallholder farms mainly in the Kenyan Highlands. This projected cattle population is more than twice the officially reported figure of 3 million for the national herds.

4. Total milk produced recalculated to be 4 billion litres per annum (up from 3 billion)
Based on SDP’s recalculated cattle projections above, SDP recalculates total milk production in the rural highlands to be an estimated 4 billion litres per annum.

5. Annual consumption of milk recalculated to be 145 litres per person (up from 100 litres)
SDP recalculates annual milk consumption by Kenyans to be 145 litres per person, making Kenyans amongst the highest milk consumers in the developing world. The rural areas have an estimated population of about 14.5 million people. Assuming that the estimated 9.6 million people living in the urban areas mainly depend on milk from the high potential areas, and that 13 percent of production goes to calf feed or spoilage loss, milk availability from the highlands was estimated to be about 145 litres per person per year. Previously, milk consumption in Central and Rift Valley provinces, which are important milk production areas, has been estimated to be between 144 and 152 litres per person per year.

Source: SDP Policy Brief No.10.

ILRI wins five international communication awards

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ILRI receives 5 top honours for the institute's communications products.

International communications professionals have awarded ILRI 5 top honours for the institute’s communications products. ILRI’s poster series won gold and four other products won silver: ILRI’s calendar, holiday card, photoessay (‘Niger: Behind the Famine Footage’), and a paid editorial that ran in Scotland’s Herald newspaper during then G8 meeting in Glenneagles in 2005.

Herald Editorial

Photoessay – Niger:Behind the Famine Footage
 

ILRI Calendar 2006 (front)
 

Christmas Holiday card (inside)

These awards were bestowed by Association for Communication Excellence (ACE), the world’s leading international professional organization for agricultural communications. They were presented in Quebec City in June 2006. The previous year, ILRI won a bronze award from ACE for the design of its 10-year-anniversary logo.
 

ILRI's 10th Anniversary Logo
 

 

EricOuma_ACEAward

ILRI's Eric Ouma receiving an award from ACE (2005)

In previous years, ILRI has won other design awards for its posters from the International Advertising Society.

ILRI’s director for partnerships and communications, Mr Bruce Scott, said ‘ILRI conducts livestock research to reduce severe poverty, hunger and environmental degradation in poor countries. We try to offer communications that are as compelling as they are authoritative so that our science can make the biggest difference on world poverty. It is particularly rewarding that our communications peers judge us to excel at this.’

Photo Essay: Kenya: Saving lands and livelihoods in Kitengela

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State-of -the-art 'participatory mapping' helps stop the decline
of unique wildlife-rich pastoral lands.

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Pastoralists can take most of the credit for the survival of savannah wildlife herds in Kenya, since herding livestock is usually compatible with wildlife.

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But development today is threatening pastoral lands and ways of life, particularly near growing urban areas.
In Kitengela, south of Nairobi National Park, an unusual group of community, government, private and other organizations is pioneering an approach to help pastoralists and their lands, livestock and wildlife thrive. A foundation pays pastoral families not to fence, develop or sell their acreage. Strictly voluntary, the program now leases 8,500 acres from 117 families; another 118 community members, with more than 17,000 acres, are waiting to join. The program aims to lease and conserve 60,000 acres—enough to allow the seasonal migration of wildlife to and from Nairobi National Park.

OPEN ACCESS AN IMPERATIVE

If this program fails and more fences and buildings go up, the annual migration of wildebeest and other animals will be halted, provoking the crash of the Athi-Kaputiei ecosystem, which even in wildlife-rich East Africa stands out for its spectacular concentration of big mammals—remarkably right in the backyard of burgeoning Nairobi. The success of this lease program depends on spatial information about where fences have been put up that are blocking wildlife migrations and where the land remains unfenced, allowing herds of wildlife to move through a corridor of open land to their calving grounds beyond.

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STATE-OF-THE-ART MAPS

The maps needed for this project are being developed together by members of the Kitengela Ilparakuo Landowners Association (KILA) and scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The participatory mapping combines expert skills with local people’s spatial knowledge. This joint work is stimulating broad-based decision-making, innovation and social change in Kitengela, where access to, and use of, culturally sensitive spatial data is now in the hands of community which is generating the information. 

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

The maps are helping members of KILA focus on specific areas where they can still make a difference by keeping land unfenced. Just as importantly, the maps are creating a level playing field for the local Maasai, who face an array of powerful groups wanting to develop their traditional lands, from government officials to land speculators, shopping mall operators, building contractors, stone quarry companies, politicians and ordinary people hungry for a bit of land. The community, through its county council, is in the process of developing land-use plans using some of the maps generated by the community. The land-use plans will legislate the use of land, protect important landscape such as swamps, riverine, water catchment areas, open wildlife corridors (through land lease schemes) and rehabilitate degraded areas such as quarries.

PROTECTING LANDS AND LIVELIHOODS

TS_060828_001_TN4This project has succeeded in saving lands as well as livelihoods. There is now more grazing land for livestock and wildlife, and once eroded and degraded land is recovering, since the grazing pressure has been reduced. The Maasai are working hard to conserve the Kitengela plains and are benefiting from the presence of their wild neighbours through ecotourism projects. On the socio-economic side, household incomes have risen, school enrollment is up and women have been empowered.

MAPS PROVIDE STRONG EVIDENCE

Whether the maps are in time to stop the Kitengela sprawl and the crash of a unique wildlife-rich ecosystem at Nairobi’s back door will soon be known. Fifteen years ago Kitengela had under a dozen inhabitants and three kiosks. Today, the town has swelled to 15,000 residents, and more are arriving by the day. As the numbers of people have increased, the numbers of migrating wildebeest have dropped from 30,000 to 8,000 in the last 20 years. Despite its successes, the novel leasing program must expand to reverse losses not only of wildlife, but also of livestock and the lands that support both. In addition, KILA and its partners will need the support of strong and judicious land-use planning. Scientific mapping is giving KILA the evidence they need to persuade land-use planners to help them protect their lands.

 
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The promise of science for development

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Doherty Lecture by Dame Bridget Ogilvie urges Africa not to follow Britain’s example but rather to help its science and scientists to flourish.

The brain drain can be stopped and redressed in Britain as well as Africa. But two things must happen: one, governments must do more to create an environment where science can flourish; two, scientists and technicians must be nurtured, developed and rewarded for their talents and contributions.

This was the key message of Dame Bridget Ogilvie who delivered the Peter Doherty Distinguished Lecture on 24 November 2004, at the Nairobi headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Doherty Lecture Announcement Poster

Dame Bridget emphasized the importance of people development and career development in research institutes. She placed great importance on training and developing the scientists and graduates who do the work. The success of any research institute is dependent on the expertise of staff.

‘My first and my most important message to anyone interested in accelerating scientific innovation is the need to ensure that the appropriately trained, talented and supported workforce is available as nothing can happen without it.  My experience suggests that this is neither easy nor cheap to achieve, but it is essential.’

She recalled her work at the Wellcome Trust, which she directed from 1991 to 1998, and how difficult it was to entice veterinary graduates into research. Salary differentials of academic and practicing scientists created further challenges, so polices were introduced to increase salaries of the academics to stem any brain-drain. The UK has already witnessed this, and she urged Africans to learn from these mistakes and take proactive stops to nurture their intellectual capital.

In closing, Dame Bridget said: ‘The extraordinary scientific revolution…..will continue to bring great benefits to the public.  However, this will occur where governments not only provide the funds that are necessary but also exhibit leadership by providing the regulatory, social, fiscal and working conditions that make a nation an attractive place in which scientists and the innovative industries that depend on them can function well.’

ILRI’s Distinguished Lecture series is named after Australian Peter Doherty, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Medicine or Physiology, who from 1986 to 1992 chaired the program committee of the board of trustees of ILRI’s predecessor, the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD).
Dame Ogilvie’s lecture is now available as a book, The Promise of Science for Development.

The electronic version is available in PDF format.


Printed copies are available from ILRI’s Addis and Nairobi InfoCentres: Requests can be made to InfoCentre Team

Resource guide now available for research on agriculture-health linkages

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A new initiative aims to improve health, reduce malnutrition and food insecurity and promote pro-poor agricultural development through closer collaboration between the agriculture and health sectors.

Research at the crossroads of agriculture and health conducted by the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Research (CGIAR) has been building and increasing in recent years. The CGIAR centers have a long tradition of working on nutrition, and now conduct a wide range of health-related work in the context of agriculture, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, food safety and the health effects of pesticide use.

Since 2004, steps have been taken to co-ordinate the health-related work conducted by the 15 centers. This included the founding of a committee of the directors general of the centers, a stock-take of the centers existing health-related work, a workshop on agriculture-health research in the CGIAR and the publication of a series of briefs on ‘Understanding the Linkages between Agriculture and Health’.

In 2006, the Alliance Executive of the CGIAR endorsed the concept of a research platform on Agriculture and Health as a way to move forward.

The ‘Resource Guide on CGIAR Research on Agriculture-Health Linkages’, hosted on the website of the International Food and Policy Research Institute, is a portal to the work conducted in this area by different CGIAR centers, showing who is doing what on health.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) now has a webpage on IFPRI's website highlighting the following areas of ILRI's research in relation to human health:

Livestock keeping and human health
As part of its People, Livestock and the Environment Theme, ILRI conducts research to protect and enhance the physical human capital of the poor by developing strategies to reduce health risks and improve nutritional benefits associated with livestock keeping. Other projects focused on the use of water and feed for livestock also consider human health impacts.

Impact of livestock production on human health and nutrition
ILRI is working to improve understanding of the links between livestock keeping and the health and nutrition of poor people, particularly those engaging in smallholder livestock production and marketing. Activities under way include field studies, literature reviews and explorations of the ways in which livestock keeping might benefit the care of people with HIV/AIDS.

Zoonotic diseases
Poor people in developing countries have a high risk of exposure to zoonoses—diseases transmitted from animals to people. ILRI is helping to bridge the artificial divide between animal and human health. With over 75% of human infections having a zoonotic origin, the need to examine the epidemiological relationships between pathogens and their animal and human hosts is paramount. ILRI is putting specifically focusing on a major neglected zoonoses, Cysticercosis, a highly complex disease affecting both people and pigs. ILRI is participating in a Cysticercosis Working Group of Eastern and Southern Africa (CWGESA), which promotes effective communication, collaboration and coordination of integrated research and control activities aimed at combating cysticercosis. CWGESA and ILRI have recently developed a Cysticercosis Prevention Poster which is currently available in English, Xhosa and Afrikaans. This poster is being used for a rapid information campaign in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa where a neurocysticercosis outbreak among children has been reported.

Livestock, water quality, and human health
ILRI has recently initiated limited research on water-mediated impacts on human health and on INRM approaches to reducing health risks. Most of this research falls within ILRI’s collaboration with the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food and the CGIAR Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management and Agriculture. Key issues include the transmission of water-borne pathogens such as coliform bacteria, cryptosporidium, and Fasciola that result from animal manure contaminating domestic water supplies and where simple remedial interventions are feasible

Wastewater is increasingly used for irrigation of fodder crops that fuel the growing urban and peri-urban dairy production in mega cities such as Hyderabad (India) and Faisalabad (Pakistan). ILRI in collaboration with IWMI and Indian and Pakistani public health institutions and municipal water authorities is investigating the relationship between water – soil – produce quality (fodder and milk) to assess the chain of possible contaminations (heavy metals, nitrate, parasites) and ultimately the hazards to producers (farmers, dairy producers) and consumers of livestock products in these urban areas.

Livestock feed quality and human health
Aflatoxin in milk – a possible hazard to human health: ILRI in collaboration with ICRISAT is investigating aflatoxin contamination of fodder (mainly crop residues) as a source of aflatoxin content in milk. In selected sites in Andhra Pradesh, India, close to 50% of the milk samples contained non-permissible levels of aflatoxin. At the same time, only one of the collected fodder samples (groundnut cake) contained non-permissible levels of alflatoxin. Aflatoxin in milk can clearly present a health hazard to the consumer.

Food safety associated with livestock and livestock products
This research program has focused on identifying the public health risks associated with the marketing of unpasteurized milk, with an emphasis on developing policies and technologies for improved quality and safety without jeopardizing market access for the poor. An outcome of this work has been changes in government policies towards more acceptance of raw milk marketing in several East African countries, based on the identified low risks and high dependence of resource poor people on these markets. This work is being expanded, in cooperation with IFPRI, to examine the marketing of other livestock and livestock products, particularly in South Asia. Studies provide policy-relevant analyses of the risks and economic benefits to poor farmers, market agents, and resource-poor consumers.

Demand for better quality and safe food is increasing among urban consumers, especially among affluent ones. This poses threats to the market opportunities of smallholder producers who often are unable to access technology, inputs and services to produce high quality products demanded by the market chains serving high-end consumers. ILRI research is trying to understand the nature of quality and safety attributes demanded by consumers, their willingness to pay for such attributes and how smallholders may respond to these through participation in market chains.

Vaccines, diagnostics and disease resistance
ILRI research on livestock vaccines has direct and indirect links to medical vaccine and diagnostic research. One aspect of this work involves host functional genomics as it relates to livestock diseases that can be transmitted to humans.

A project investigating resistance to trypanosomosis in cattle is shedding light on some of the basic questions of disease resistance, which may have implications for human medical treatment. ILRI researchers first identified several regions of the cattle genome in which genes contributing to resistance or susceptibility must lie. They then identified genes within a part of the bovine genome that affects anemia, a characteristic of the disease. Remarkably, significant differences between cattle breeds that are susceptible and resistant to the disease were found in one of the candidate genes. Such a result makes it possible that the gene in question is responsible for the difference in susceptibility to anemia in the two breeds. This is now being further investigated. More recent results of this trypanosomosis genomics research appear to have implications for medical research on cholesterol. For more information, contact ILRI’s Steve Kemp at s.kemp@cgiar.org

Initiatives and Networks
Urban Harvest Programme
ILRI is a member of Urban Harvest, a CGIAR initiative to use the collective knowledge and technologies of the CGIAR Centers to strengthen urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) practiced by the poor.

System-wide Initiative on Malaria in Agriculture (SIMA)
ILRI backstops a CGIAR-wide initiative addressing malaria in agricultural communities. The System-wide Initiative on Malaria in Agriculture (SIMA) focuses the combined skills and abilities of the agricultural and health research communities, government agencies and community-based organizations. Water- and land-use and crop- and livestock-production practices are studied across a range of agro-ecosystems in Africa to identify farming activities that encourage and discourage the breeding of the mosquito vector or alter the transmission of the disease. Research-based guidelines and tools are developed and tested for use by poor communities and the non-governmental organizations and governments that serve them.

Outreach and Events
CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food
ILRI, IWMI and the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food is inviting individuals and organizations located in any of the ten riparian countries of the Nile River Basin to submit short well-written case studies describing traditional or contemporary innovations in technologies, in community and household practices, and in policies that result in better management of water and livestock resources. Relevant topics include the prevention of transmission of waterborne and water related zoonotic and animal diseases such as Cryptosporidiosis and Fasciolosis. This contest is offering USD 1000 for first prize, USD 500 for second prize and USD 250 for third prize. For more information, contact ILRI’s Don Peden at d.peden@cgiar.org

CGIAR Science Award for Promising Young Scientist
In 2005, ILRI scientist Simon Graham won the CGIAR Science Award for Promising Young Scientist for research leading to the development of a sensitive and robust system for identifying vaccine candidate molecules from Theileria parva that causes East Coast fever, a fatal disease of cattle in sub-Saharan Africa. Graham’s research may also contribute to ongoing efforts to control tropical theileriosis, a cattle disease which puts 250 million cattle around the world at risk. Furthermore, by using genomics to understand and fight T. parva, scientists may make advances against related parasites that cause malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases in which killer T cells also play a role in immunity. And because T. parva launches a cancer-like illness inside the white blood cells of cattle, it may provide a model system for understanding the mechanics of cancer biology.

Visit http://www.ifpri.org/themes/aghealth/aghealthrg.asp for the resource guide on IFPRI's website.

Nourishing the soil, feeding the continent

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Participants at the Africa Fertilizer Summit held in Abuja, Nigeria, 9-13 June 2006 heard how livestock manure is protecting soils across West Africa's dryland farming systems.
 
Innovative policies and practices are turning around Africa's soil fertility decline. Reversing the decline is vital if farmers are to have a chance to improve their livelihoods through more intensive agricultural production. Livestock are key to protecting Africa’s soils. Even modest increases in the use of livestock manure and fertilizers could trigger an African Green Revolution.

Policies for neglected arid lands

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A policy research conference on Pastoralism and Poverty Reduction in East Africa is being held in Nairobi 27-28 June 2006 to synthesize current knowledge and recommend strategies and policies for East Africa's troubled arid lands.
 
ILRI and its co-organizers will pull together an integrated set of studies that, as an ensemble, synthesize the latest policy-relevant knowledge on the livelihood issues facing pastoralists and strategies and policies that could reduce poverty over the long term in East Africa’s arid and semi-arid lands.

Future directions for livestock research for development

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A new paper by ILRI describes new scientific tools and platforms to tackle new issues emerging in collaborative livestock research for development.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently reviewed its strategy, evolution and research agenda. The resulting paper, Knowledge to Action—Strategy and Future Directions of ILRI, answers four questions:

  1. What is ILRI doing and why does it matter?
  2. How is ILRI responding to dynamic livestock, science and development environments?
  3. What are the future research directions and frontiers for ILRI?
  4. Why invest in international livestock research?

This analysis included an assessment of ILRI’s achievements over the past five years: ILRI’s Achievements: 2000–2006.

Dynamic growth of the livestock sector in the developing world is creating new opportunities. The challenge is to use the ‘livestock revolution’ driver to achieve pro-poor growth. Rapidly changing consumer demands, expanding markets for livestock products, changing food quality and safety demands, new technologies, and institutional innovations such as the supermarket revolution all create both opportunities and challenges for reducing poverty through livestock interventions.

ILRI’s Knowledge to Action paper describes the evolution of ILRI’s research program, new directions for each of the institute’s five research themes, and research areas ILRI and its partners recently established to address global issues such as emerging and zoonotic diseases, increasingly stringent food quality and safety standards, and the environmental impacts and trade-offs of changing livestock systems. ILRI and its partners are developing research platforms to enable all stakeholders in livestock development to apply the tools of new science and technology in pursuit of a shared livestock-research-for-development agenda.
 

Bird flu consultation

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ILRI and IFPRI are convening a consultation in Nairobi from 14 to 16 June 2006 to determine how the research community can best assist developing countries in the fight against bird flu.
 
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) are convening a consultation to explore how research can support efforts to control the highly contagious avian influenza, with special emphasis on the needs of developing countries and the poor. The consultation is a response to requests from donors on priorities for targeting their research investments for Asia and Africa.

The consultation has four main objectives:

  1. To share the experiences of those in the front-line of avian influenza outbreaks to provide a realistic, objective, and up-to-date backdrop for the consultation.
  2. To identify and prioritize immediate service needs that research can provide in support of preparedness and emergency responses.
  3. To identify and prioritize medium-and long-term research needs.
  4. To develop an action plan and decide how to put it in place, including the possibility of forming an inter-institutional task force.

Much of the present effort in fighting bird flu is focused on immediate actions – emergency preparedness and response. The research community, however, also has a critical role to play in anticipating and addressing medium-and longer-term issues associated with bird flu in developing countries.

One of the greatest concerns is that bird flu could eventually become endemic in developing countries due to large poultry populations, weak infrastructure, scarce veterinary expertise and a general lack of resources. Poor poultry keepers in developing countries are also at a high risk of contracting bird flu, because they live in such close proximity to their livestock. Those who keep poultry and are desperately poor have the most to lose – and many may choose to save or eat sick chickens. This could put all family members and their other livestock at risk of contracting the deadly bird flu. The impacts on poor livestock keepers in Africa are highlighted in a recent article in the New Agriculturist.

New Agriculturist news article


 

Falling fowl of avian flu? New Agriculturist 1 May 2006

Members of the international development community wishing for more information about the ILRI-IFPRI Avian Influenza Consultation should contact Keith Sones ksones@africaonline.co.ke.

Further information about bird flu is available at ILRI’s Livestock in the News: Bird Flu page.

ILRI in Southern Africa

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ILRI’s director general and new representative for Southern Africa visit the region to consult with partner organizations and get an update on work of the NEPAD and its establishment of regional African biosciences centres of excellence.

ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré, and new representative for Southern Africa, Siboniso Moyo, visited Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe in early March 2006 to meet development partners in the region, including public- and private-sector organizations, non-governmental organizations, the secretariats of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and regional offices of other centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), to which ILRI belongs.

ILRI’s new representative in Southern Africa, Siboniso Moyo, called ‘Boni’, joined ILRI in February 2006. She will be based in Maputo, Mozambique. She is an animal scientist graduate of the University of Pretoria and has spent the last 21 years doing livestock research in Zimbabwe and the region.

On their mission, Moyo and ILRI Director General Seré met with John Mugabe, Executive Secretary of NEPAD’s Science and Technology Forum, and Aggrey Ambali, Coordinator of NEPAD’s African Biosciences Initiative, in Pretoria, South Africa. NEPAD’s African Biosciences Initiative, conducted under the NEPAD Science and Technology Programme, is establishing regional networks of centres of excellence comprising hubs and nodes.

Describing the purpose of their mission, Carlos Seré explained that ILRI plans to engage actively in the region’s science and technology agenda for agricultural research. He updated his NEPAD colleagues on the first NEPAD-initiated biosciences centre of excellence to be established, known as Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) and based at ILRI’s laboratories, in Nairobi, Kenya. BecA’s new Network Director, Bruno Kubata, has been on the ground for 100 days, Seré reported, and is working to finalize the BecA implementation plan, with the view to implementing the Network’s research agenda at the BecA hub and nodes from mid-2006.

NEPAD’s John Mugabe said ILRI’s presence in the southern Africa region is welcome. He reported that all the NEPAD-initiated biosciences hubs, and their accompanying networks, are now in place. Besides BecA, based at ILRI’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and encompassing biosciences nodes throughout eastern and central Africa, there are now three others established: one in Alexandria, Egypt for North Africa, a second in Dakar, Senegal, for West Africa, and a third based at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), in Pretoria, South Africa, for southern Africa. Mugabe said staff at all four hubs of these biosciences centres of excellence now need to develop links with each other and to exchange information.

The ILRI team also met with NEPAD’s Agricultural Advisor, Richard Mkandawire. ILRI’s Seré explained that a series of regional consultations were in progress in regard to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). The main goal of CAADP, NEPAD’s Mkandawire explained, is to help African countries reach a higher level of economic growth through agriculturally led development that eliminates hunger, reduces poverty and food insecurity, and enables expansion of exports. A road map for achieving this has been developed by the NEPAD Secretariat to coordinate and facilitate the transition from framework to country-level implementation of the CAADP Agenda. The country-level implementation process seeks to align national agricultural sector policies, strategies and investment programmes with CAADP principles, facilitate better partnerships and alliances, facilitate reliable tracking of the level and efficiency of public-sector investments (target-10%) and growth rate (target-6%) of the sector. It is important, Mkandawire said, that the livestock agenda is tabled during the country round table discussions. CAADP’s technical arm is the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), an umbrella organization bringing together stakeholders in agricultural research and development in Africa with a secretariat in Accra, Ghana.

One world, one health

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Holistic approaches to controlling the 'perfect storm' of health problems in poor countries, particularly Africa's catastrophic disease burden, must include better control of diseases transmitted between animals and people.

A paper to be published this May 2006 in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journal PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed open-access journal (available online at www.plosmedicine.org) advocates linking integrated work on ‘neglected’ tropical diseases with major global health partnerships recently formed to tackle the three most devastating diseases of the poor: malaria, TB and AIDS. The authors of the paper, which include development economist Jeffrey Sachs, argue that while new partnerships and initiatives have significantly raised funding and awareness of the need to scale up the fight against the ‘big three’ diseases, conspicuously absent is work on a group of ‘neglected tropical diseases’ that may threaten the poor as much as malaria, TB and AIDS and for which there are already cheap and effective control strategies. The authors propose that our success in controlling the big three may depend on a concurrent attack on this group of neglected diseases, which include three vector-borne protozoan infections (leishmaniasis, human African trypanosomosis and Chagas disease), three bacterial infections and seven kinds of helminth (worm) infections.

The potential benefits of taking a more holistic approach to disease control are being popularized in complementary initiatives advocating ‘one health’ strategies that simultaneously address human and animal health. (See, for example, a new book exploring grass roots ideas from East and Southern Africa on how to integrate wildlife, livestock and human health for both conservation and development: ‘One World, One Health’ is available online from LEAD, the Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative.

ILRI supports these holistic health approaches and further argues that another class of neglected diseases of the poor—‘zoonotic’ diseases, or those transmitted between people and animals—should be included. Zoonotic diseases account for a remarkable 75% of all human diseases and include such emerging diseases as avian influenza. Esther Schelling, a veterinary epidemiologist on joint appointment with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Swiss Tropical Institute, points out that zoonotic diseases are virtually excluded from most health initiatives ‘because they’re simply not accounted for’. ILRI is helping to ensure that they are accounted for and that methods to control them are friendly to the poor.

Two papers on this topic by Schelling and colleagues are available online:
British Medical Journal article
Lancet article

Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI, says that with the sequence in recent years of BSE (‘mad cow disease’), foot-and-mouth disease, and now bird flu, there is definitely increasing interest in zoonotic diseases.

‘Donors like the Welcome Trust’, he says, ‘are increasing their investment in tropical animal disease research. Our own strategy is to develop appropriate methods for researchers and policy-makers to evaluate the risk of these zoonotic diseases and together identify the most promising strategies and policies that can help to reduce such risk, particularly for the poor. We have activities specifically looking at zoonoses such as brucellosis and bovine TB, and we are building up our expertise in food safety issues. Strengthening our expertise on food safety and the risks posed by zoonoses is central to two of ILRI’s strategic research themes, the first on sustaining lands and livelihoods which involves protecting human health, and the second on improving livestock-related market opportunities in domestic and international markets, which are increasingly threatened by such food safety concerns.’

In relation to bird flu, Dr Seré explains, ‘ILRI will not be the virologists or poultry specialists. But we have comparative strength in systems analysis, which combines social science with epidemiology and animal genetics and other lab bench research to address complex health problems. We do this in conjunction with partners who bring more specific expertise, such as in poultry or vaccines. What we specifically bring to the picture is a “poverty lens” to understand the implications of health problems, issues and control strategies on the poorest populations in the world.’

‘Clearly, research is not a “rapid deployment tool”’, he says. ‘There are other organizations—such as the World Health Organisation (www.who.org), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (www.fao.org), and the World Animal Health Organisation (www.oie.org) —that have a regulatory mandate and policy responsibility and are linked directly to governments. ILRI’s comparative advantage is in the longer term: in understanding the issues and in providing sound technical research to back these agencies which are doing the short-term response work. As we see more and more that boundaries don’t work, that disease is a global problem, we encourage industrialized countries to share their resources with developing countries, not just out of enlightened self-interest, but also, for example, to ensure food safety for their domestic consumers. And finally, we are particularly interested in helping developing countries to build their own research capacity to understand, model and control complex disease problems.

The collective power of smallholder farmers

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Kenya's new Dairy Development Policy aims to bring Kenya's estimated 39,000 informal milk traders into the formal sector.

BBC World Service began to broadcast a Kenya dairy story on 6 April 2006, the same day Kenya’s Minister for Livestock and Fisheries Development, Joseph Munyao, presented a new Dairy Development Policy in Nairobi – the final step before the new Policy and accompanying Dairy Development Bill are presented to Kenya’s Parliament.

Kenya’s new Dairy Policy now broadly reflects the approach the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its partners have advocated over the past several years – the need to engage with and develop the country’s hugely important informal milk market, which provides a livelihood to an estimated 1.8 million smallholder households.

The new Dairy Policy now clearly acknowledges the role of the informal market actors in the development of the sector. The policy states that it will ‘facilitate the transformation of the informal milk trade towards formalisation’. Specific measures mentioned include development of low-cost and appropriate technologies for small investors, training programmes on safe milk handling, efforts to improve the standards of milk processing in the informal sector, provision of incentives for improved milk handling, and establishment of a supportive milk dealer certification system. The Dairy Policy also announces that the Kenya Dairy Board functions will be streamlined and steps will be taken so that the Board regulates itself and is managed by its stakeholders.

The new Dairy Policy is a huge step forward in a struggle that has been ongoing since 1998, when Kenya’s big milk buyer (Kenya Co-operative Creameries) went into liquidation. Various attempts were subsequently made to oust smallholders from the market, including media campaigns advising that unpasteurized (‘raw’) milk was unsafe and should not be consumed. The BBC Kenya Dairy Story, broadcast on its World Service, tells how the smallholders, supported by ILRI and partners, fought back, and how they are now being brought into the formal milk market. The Kenya Dairy Story was broadcast from 6-13 April 2006.

Small is Beautiful – The Kenya Dairy Story
Kenyans love their milk. Most of the 4 billion litres consumed there each year is produced by smallholders with a couple of cows, and sold house-to-house by thousands of street hawkers and doorstep milkmen. But this whole milk business was under threat. In the third edition of the One Planet series (on BBC World Service) which is sharing small business success, Susie Emmett discovers how the farmers and traders fought back to keep the milk flowing.


Listen to a recording of the BBC World Service broadcast produced by WRENmedia.

Note: The latest numbers

Some of the numbers quoted in this BBC World Service broadcast ‘Small is beautiful’ have been obtained from much earlier estimates. These figures, however, grossly understate the true size and extent of Kenya’s milk sector. SDP has provided recalculated figures, which more accurately reflect the picture in Kenya today.

1. Smallholder dairy farms recalculates to be 1.8 million (up from 800,000)

The estimated 800,000 smallholder farms has been widely cited for many years, during which time Kenya’s population has grown significantly. SDP recalculates the number of smallholders to be 1.8 million.

2. Milk hawkers recalculated to be 39,650 (up from 30,000)

SDP recalculates the number of small milk vendors in Kenya to be 39,650.

3. Number of dairy cattle recalculated to be 6.7 million (up from 3 million)
There are concerns about the reliability of the official cattle figures for Kenya; no livestock census has been conducted for decades and the methods used to estimate cattle numbers are imprecise. A conservative estimate of the size of the national dairy herd using detailed SDP survey data suggests that there are about 6.7 million dairy cattle (2.7 million high grade and 4 million crosses) owned by 1.8 million rural smallholder farms mainly in the Kenyan Highlands. This projected cattle population is more than twice the officially reported figure of 3 million for the national herds.

4. Total milk produced recalculated to be 4 billion litres per annum (up from 3 billion)
Based on SDP’s recalculated cattle projections above, SDP recalculates total milk production in the rural highlands to be an estimated 4 billion litres per annum.

5. Annual consumption of milk recalculated to be 145 litres per person (up from 100 litres)
SDP recalculates annual milk consumption by Kenyans to be 145 litres per person, making Kenyans amongst the highest milk consumers in the developing world. The rural areas have an estimated population of about 14.5 million people. Assuming that the estimated 9.6 million people living in the urban areas mainly depend on milk from the high potential areas, and that 13 percent of production goes to calf feed or spoilage loss, milk availability from the highlands was estimated to be about 145 litres per person per year. Previously, milk consumption in Central and Rift Valley provinces, which are important milk production areas, has been estimated to be between 144 and 152 litres per person per year.

Source: SDP Policy Brief No.10.

Highlights from the Kenya Dairy Story broadcast by BBC World Service:
In Kenya, a knock on the door means the milkman is here – today as everyday – delivering fresh raw milk to one of his many grateful customers. “I like this milk because this one comes daily, and it is fresh and good, that’s why I like it” says one of his customers.


This milk vendor serves approximately 60 customers, and sells approximately 100 litres of raw milk, each and every day. In Kenya, more than 30,000 milk hawkers [recalculated in August 2006 to be 39,650] are out daily on their bicycles or pushing carts to deliver nutritious milk from 800,000 small dairy farms [recalculated in August 2006 to have risen to 1.8 million].

Despite all its success, this whole wonderful milk business was under threat. The government here, as in so many countries, decided that small-scale farmers and traders couldn’t supply milk as safely as large farms and dairies. So, how come the hawkers are still in business, as are the smallholder dairy farmers whose milk they sell?

Kenya has three million improved dairy cattle [recalculated in August 2006 to have risen to 6.7 million] – that’s the largest dairy herd in Africa – and most of them are on small farms. Almost half the three billion litres of milk they produce are sold direct from small farms to households nearby. So the question is, can smallholder farmers produce clean, safe milk? Research by ILRI and others says yes – and changed lives because of it.

But what about that other all-important business criteria: efficiency; are the smallholder dairy farmers here in Kenya efficient? Steve Staal, agricultural economist at ILRI, says research shows smallholder dairy farmers are actually very competitive. ‘Indeed, small-scale mixed crop-and-livestock production is likely to be a more sustainable way to intensify agricultural production in environmental terms than large-scale industrial livestock production’, says Staal.

The biggest threat to smallholders came a few years ago when the one big buyer in Kenya – The Kenya Cooperative Creameries – went bust. Government policies did not recognize the small-scale operators and thus they were deemed to be operating illegally. Amos Omore is part of the team at ILRI trying to boost dairy incomes for the poor. He remembers how big dairy business was not going to let Kenya’s 800,000 [1.8 million] new milk entrepreneurs get in their way. It was a clash between big and small.

Kenya’s official ban on milk hawking was based on the milk not being safe. The nation’s newspapers carried many such stories. In the face of this scare-mongering, researchers got researching. David Mwangi at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), says that the public health risks being talked about were minimal – ‘almost not there’.On average, Kenyans drink 100 litres of milk a year, [recalculated in August 2006 to be 144–152 litres of milk a year] making them among the highest milk consumers in the developing world. But they don’t drink milk as it comes. ILRI’s Omore says the research showed that most consumers boil fresh milk before drinking it, which makes it as safe as pasteurized milk.

Gathering this evidence was a huge step. Using that evidence to change policy and mindsets was another.


KARI’s Mwangi says, ‘We worked with advocacy groups and hosted a high-profile meeting. And we had facts to table there.’ This research helped lead to the Kenya Dairy Board approving training for smallholder milk producers and traders. That’s important: most members of smallholder dairy cooperatives depend on their milk money to educate their children. Furthermore, easing restrictions against small traders helps poor customers because of the price of processed milk is beyond the means of most poor people here.’

John Kutwa, a former ILRI technician in the dairy team, says that ‘small’ characterizes most of Kenya’s milk business. ‘It’s small farmers selling to small traders and processors who deliver to small (poor) consumers.’


ILRI’s Amos Omore has been battling on behalf of smallholder milk producers and sellers since their troubles began. And he’s battling still. ‘Right now the policy environment has shifted towards small-scale traders’ he says. But the change is not yet complete. Small businesses are important but often overlooked.

‘Changing policies takes time’, he says, ‘and so does changing attitudes. In this country in the 1960s and 70s, it was always assumed that development projects should be “mega” to achieve some quantum leap in development. But if you look at development holistically – in terms of employment, in terms of nutrition, in terms of cash flow – these are the stepping stones that allow people to move from one living standard to the next. Small is beautiful!  Small should not be sacrificed at the altar of large-scale businesses that often fail.’