Reducing the risks of bird flu in poor communities in Indonesia

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Poultry seller in Indonesia (photo by ILRI / C Jost)

To reduce risks faced by poor communities to outbreaks of bird flu (highly pathogenic avian influenza), experts in Indonesia say poultry farmers, traders and transporters, as well as the general public, need to be better educated about the disease and its control. They also recommend strengthening the capacity of Indonesia's institutions to control the country's bird flu pandemic.

These recommendations were made during a workshop held in Bogor, Indonesia, 5–6 August 2010, that concludes the research activities of an Indonesian component of a project to develop strategies for reducing the risks of bird flu among poor communities in countries of Asia and Africa.

The two-year project is supported by the UK Department for International Development and is implemented in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria.

About 40 participants attended the Bogor workshop, some drawn from the key partners in the project: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture, the International Food Policy Research Institute, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and the Royal Veterinary College. Other participants represented a variety of stakeholders in better control of bird flu in poor communities. These included local universities such as Gadjah Mada University, in Yogyakarta, and Bogor Agricultural University; local poultry farmer groups and members of the poultry industry; and international researchers and donor agents conducting similar projects in the country.

The workshop participants made 5 key recommendations regarding better control of bird flu in poor communities:

widen uptake of basic biosecurity measures through education
provide targeted subsidies
develop professional actor associations with certification schemes
find ways to encourage prompt reporting of outbreaks of bird flu
build public awareness campaigns to promote changes in public behaviour that reduce risks to the disease

Ad hoc institutions set up after the initial outbreaks of bird flu in the country played a key role in the subsequent dissemination of information on bird flu. The Indonesia National Committee for Avian Influenza Control and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness is one such institution, which usefully brought together animal and human health authorities in a joint response to the pandemic. The workshop members recommended that these institutions be integrated into relevant government departments throughout the country’s administrative units. These recommendations will be further developed in consultation with the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture.

This piece is adapted from an original story posted on the Market Opportunities Digest blog drafted by ILRI staff members Fred Unger and Bernard Bett, scientific members of the project who attended the Bogor workshop, and Tezira Lore, communications specialist for ILRI's Markets Theme.

Read more on the website of the collaborative research project: Pro-poor HPAI Risk Reduction

Need for delivery networks for East Coast fever vaccine highlighted in audio interview

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

East Coast fever is a major livestock disease in eastern, central and southern Africa. Transmitted by ticks infected with a protozoan parasite (Theileria parva), it kills over 1 million animals each year, damaging livelihoods of poor livestock keepers and farmers in 11 countries. Researchers from organizations such as the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are working to find innovative ways to protect African livestock against this and other ‘orphan’ livestock diseases.

One of the successes in the efforts to fight East Coast fever has been the development of a ‘live’ vaccine, which includes the whole parasite, weakened so as not to cause severe disease thatcame after over 30 years of research by organizations including ILRI and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute. This long-term research was funded by UK Department for International Development and other donors of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. The vaccine is now registered in Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania and its widespread use is being promoted so that it can give protection to the animals on which many poor people in these countries depend.

In the following audio interview, John McDermott, Deputy Director General-Research at ILRI, speaks in Nairobi of the need ‘to develop networks that can distribute and deliver’ the vaccine to those who need it, which should encourage its widespread use. This interview, produced in July 2010 by AFGAX Radio (http://www.agfax.net), also shares the expectations of a veterinarian from Kenya and a farmer from Tanzania of how the vaccine will help livestock keepers.

To listen to the interview, visit: http://www.agfax.net/radio/detail.php?i=353

More information about the East Coast fever live vaccine is available in the following article.

Study of future of global food cites ways to advance and sustain livestock development

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI systems analyst Philip Thornton, participating in a media panel at the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen, December 2009 (photo by ILRI / P Kristjanson).

Publication this week of 21 papers in a special open-access edition of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, part of a UK government Foresight study on the future of the global food industry, is causing a bit of a stir. The mass media are focusing on the wilder predictions, such as the possibility that we may be growing meat artificially, in vats, to feed the 9 billion-plus people expected to be alive at mid-century.

But more importantly, this major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, argues that although big, the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable and many of the papers are optimistic.

What is needed in addition to novel approaches to increasing food production, they say, are better uses of an array of low-tech to high-tech solutions, some already available, others needing refinement or a rethink for meeting the needs of the world's vast army of smallholder farmers.

As the Guardian article reports: 'Other papers suggest a radical rethink of global food production is needed to reduce its dependence on oil. Up to 70% of the energy needed to grow and supply food at present is fossil-fuel based which in turn contributes to climate change.

'"The need for action is urgent given the time required for investment in research to deliver new technologies to those that need them and for political and social change to take place," says the paper by Beddington.

'"Major advances can be achieved with the concerted application of current technologies and the importance of investing in research sooner rather than later to enable the food system to cope with challenges in the coming decades," says the paper led by the population biologist Charles Godfray of Oxford University.'

Regarding novel ideas on the horizon, in an interview with the Guardian, Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, and an author of one of the papers, said conventional animal breeding may be insufficient to meet the anticipated doubling of demand for dairy and meat products in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and to do so in sustainable ways. Thornton described two 'wild cards' that could transform global meat and milk production: 'One is artificial meat, which is made in a giant vat, and the other is nanotechnology, which is expected to become more important as a vehicle for delivering medication to livestock.'

But Thornton cautions against holding out hope for any one technology to solve our looming global food insecurity. He says we need to invest now in options across the whole gamut of agricultural development. Livestock development in poor countries, he says, 'will increasingly be affected by competition for natural resources, particularly land and water, as well as competition between food and feed, and by the need to operate in a carbon-constrained economy.' To help the world's 600 million small-scale farmers and herders increase their production and do so more efficiently, he says, will require continuing advances in the three pillars of livestock development–breeding, nutrition, and animal health.

The final Foresight report will be published later this year in advance of the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

Read more at: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biology, Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects, by Philip Thornton.

The Guardian: Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050, 16 August 2010

Small-scale traders in ‘clean milk’ strengthen the milk value chain in urban India

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Small- and medium-scale milk traders—not big or even small grocery stores—are what links most dairy farmers and consumers in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. Milk and milk products make up a large part of the most nourishing foods available to millions of poor people in this remote, poverty-stricken state of northeastern India. To promote the business of ‘clean milk’ among smaller scale traders, researchers recently trained more than 90 dealers in improved milk handling technique.

For three weeks this July 2010, courses were conducted on clean and hygienic milk handling and distribution for milk traders and vendors. Participants were trained in such specifics as the causes of milk spoilage and disease, hygienic milk handling and transportation, how to conduct tests for milk quality, and ways to ensure milk containers used in all processes of milk handling are sanitized.

The course trainers and materials were provided by staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who are working to educate and skill up relatively informal milk traders in the production and sales of clean milk and milk products. The benefits of this training are many, including not only cleaner, hygienically handled, milk, but also more milk sales, greater customer satisfaction and improved community health.

The trainings are part of a series that will reach more than 300 traders who collect and sell milk on the outskirts of Guwahati. The five modules that make up each training course are being delivered in 12 batches through October 2010.

Led by the Directorate of Dairy Development in Assam, the training program is supported by the Assam Agricultural Competitiveness Project under an initiative of the Joint Coordination & Monitoring Committee, which is bringing together organizations such as Dairy Development, the Veterinary Department, the public health departments in Assam, the Guwahati Municipal Corporation, the Assam Rural Infrastructure & Agricultural Services Society, and ILRI.

ILRI’s participation in this initiative is part of a project, ‘Improvement of the traditional dairy value chains in Assam’, partly funded by the UK Department for International Development’s Research-into-Use program. The project aims to increase demand for locally produced, good-quality milk in Assam and the capacity to supply it. Project members are supporting agents involved in the entire peri-urban traditional dairy value chain, from production, to distribution to the sales of safe, high-quality milk and dairy products.

ILRI has helped the Directorate of Dairy Development to mobilize Assamese dairy producers, suppliers and processors in the traditional sector as well as policymakers to improve the quality of milk delivered to consumers and to strengthen the dairy sector in general. ILRI is a member of a team strengthening the capacity of the local milk producer & milk traders/vendors association and will work with the Directorate of Dairy Development on a Joint Coordination and Monitoring Committee to monitor the ways that the lessons imparted to the milk traders are implemented and adapted.

Asif Bin Qutub, a project coordinator with ILRI in India and one of the trainers in this course, said that: ‘This training addresses trader needs identified after a baseline survey conducted by ILRI showed that most of the traders had lost potential customers as a result of selling inferior milk due to not following proper milk handling procedures.’

‘The training aims to address other issues as well,’ Qutub said. ‘It provides dealers with information on milk prices and good business practices—information likely to motivate them to improve the quality of the milk they supply to their customers.’

Those trained said their newly acquired knowledge would help them as well as farmers to increase their milk sales, and at higher prices, to reduce their losses from spoilage, and to protect their health and that of their families. They also mentioned that they looked forward to gaining greater approval for their businesses as well as new opportunities.

Sagar Dhakal, vice president of Guwahati’s Milk Suppliers Association, said he and his colleagues had agreed to keep the training materials on display in their offices and to share their training more widely with others in the business.

Those participating in the courses will receive certificates from Assam’s Directorate of Dairy Development and Joint Coordination and Monitoring Committee.

Scientists argue the importance of Africa’s diverse livestock — and the need for genebanks to conserve them

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Steve Kemp, a geneticist at the Nairobi laboratories of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for both ILRI and the University of Liverpool, argues in this short video (2:24 minutes) the new opportunities — as well as urgent need — for exploring the remarkably rich livestock diversity that evolved and still exists on the highly diverse African continent.

‘We need to study the genetics of the animals,’ he says, as well as ‘the farming systems in which they are being used and their production characteristics. And that has never been done systematically in situ across this extraordinary diversity of African livestock.’ Kemp describes fast-improving technologies in the ‘new genetics’ — technologies that are allowing scientists, for the first time, to attempt these very broad kinds of genetic analyses. And he makes a case for establishing livestock genebanks to help preserve the continent’s livestock diversity, which is rapidly being lost. ‘Unless you move relatively quickly,’ warns Kemp, ‘there’ll be nothing left to study.’ Kemp makes these points in an article published in a June 2010 issue of the international journal Science. The co-authors of the article are Tadelle Dessie, an ILRI livestock breeding specialist based at ILRI’s campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Olivier Hanotte, a geneticist that formerly worked at ILRI and now directs a Frozen Ark initiative at the University of Nottingham, in the UK. Although genebanks are an important ‘stop-gap’ for preserving livestock diversity, says Kemp, his article makes the point that ‘at the same time that you bank, you must understand the characteristics of what you’re preserving.' 'ILRI is well positioned to catalyze this kind of research,’ Kemp says. ‘It has strong links with Africa and with African partners, who have access to the livestock. It has the mix of skills it needs to understand the function of livestock, right across the spectrum from disease resistance to their role in the marketplace. And it also has the technology — the molecular tools and the informatics tools — to allow us to begin this process.’ ‘But ILRI cannot perform any of this analysis alone,’ warns Kemp. ‘It needs to network with partners in the West and across Africa.’

Science: 'Time to tap Africa's livestock genomes', 25 Jun 2010

BBC News: 'African livestock offers untapped genetic resource', 24 Jun 2010

Over 300 agricultural research projects in Africa are mapped

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

An initiative has now mapped over 300 of the world’s ongoing agricultural research projects in Africa. Evelyn Katingi, the map coordinator, says this represents ‘an 86 per cent coverage of information from all 15 centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s pre-eminent group of agricultural research-for-development specialists.’ Katingi leads this initiative at the Nairobi campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

‘CGMap Ongoing Research in Africa’ is the result of a collaborative effort between two CGIAR programs: Collective Action in Eastern and Southern Africa and ICT-KM (Information and Communication Technologies—Knowledge Management). The map makes information about research projects across Africa and the CGIAR consortium accessible to staff, partners and other key stakeholders in African agricultural research.

Information in the map is contributed by CGIAR scientists, who provide details of their projects, including time frame, location, key players and partners involved and contact information.

Started in 2007, this project provides an interactive way of viewing all projects that the 15 CGIAR partners are involved in, allows one to search and find out more about on-going projects and provides links to key players in agricultural research in Africa and beyond.

According to information collected from the map, 21 per cent of reported projects focus on crops, 14 per cent on policy and institutions, 10 per cent on livestock, 5 per cent on land management, 4 per cent on soils and 2 per cent on fisheries.

Most of the projects currently mapped are being conducted in East Africa, with 120 projects in Kenya, 91 in Uganda and 87 in Tanzania. But coverage of other countries, especially Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia, is growing.

A new version of the map launched earlier in the year is attracting increasing numbers of visitors, and thus generating concomitant increasing opportunities for greater collaboration.

The CGIAR demonstrated the use and utility of the CGMap to participants of a Science Week and General Assembly of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) held 19-24 July 2010 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Visit http://ongoing-research.cgiar.org/ for more information or to learn how you can contribute to the research map.

New film makes a case for conserving East Africa’s elegant long-horned Ankole cattle

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

The genetic diversity of African livestock is increasingly under threat as indigenous livestock varieties are cross-bred, or slowly replaced, with exotic breeds that produce more milk and meat. Exotic livestock varieties are, however, less resistant to African environmental and climatic challenges and are also less resistant to endemic diseases like trypanosomosis (called ‘sleeping sickness’ in people).

The following 3-minute film highlights an initiative supported by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Uganda that is working to conserve purebred Ankole cattle, a breed native in eastern Africa and relied upon by farmers in at least four countries.

In the film, Daniel Semambo, Director of Uganda’s National Animal Genetic Resources Centre and Data Bank, outlines the issues facing many developing countries as they try to improve their livestock productivity and at the same time they try to stem losses of their native livestock breeds and genes.

Livestock researchers in Nairobi honour Heifer President JoLuck, co-winner of the ‘Nobel for Food’

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

The World Food Prize, known as the ‘Nobel for Food’ (no Nobel Prize exists for agricultural science), was created in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, who himself won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work creating high-yielding crop varieties estimated to have saved more than 1 billion lives from famine. The World Food Prize honours those who improve the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. A co-winner of this year’s World Food Prize, announced on 16 June by US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, is Jo Luck, president of the popular American charity Heifer International, which provides farm animals to needy families, who then ‘pass on’ the gift of subsequent offspring to others in need.

Speaking in a seminar held in her honour at the Nairobi campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), where she served as a member of ILRI’s Board of Trustees between 2002 and 2005, Jo Luck reflected on her life that was a preparation for the role she now plays. ‘All the time I was learning what has brought me to this road. My experiences as a teacher and as a parent taught me how to recognize both the strong and the weak and how to bring people together and empower them by listening and learning from them,’ she said.

‘I represent many people who are receiving this award through me and I hope to honour and represent them properly,’ she said.

Those lucky enough to meet Jo Luck are struck immediately, and almost physically, by the depth of her energy and passion. Her ability to quickly tell a moving story that inspires people to make a difference in the world has more in common with, say, Oprah Winfrey (who has interviewed Jo Luck on her show) or Bill Clinton (who Jo Luck used to work for) than with other heads of charitable or development organizations.

The results of much of Jo Luck’s life’s work can be seen in communities in the developing world. Since joining Heifer in 1992, she has vastly up-scaled Heifer’s programs, which provide food- and income-producing animals to poor families, and helped broaden Heifer’s agenda, which now includes improving livelihoods through education and community development as well as animal husbandry.

With skilful management and superb communications abilities, Jo Luck built innovative educational initiatives that link grassroots donors in rich countries to recipients in developing countries. This not only brought new (and renewable) resources to poor farmers in developing countries but also gave Americans much better understanding of global hunger and poverty issues. As a result of her efforts, both the scope and impact of Heifer International have grown throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia, the South Pacific and Central and Eastern Europe. At least 10 million families, including 1.5 million families in 2009 alone, have been helped both to put nutritious food on their own tables and to feed others.

Carlos Seré, ILRI’s Director General, said that recognition of Jo Luck’s work with Heifer International ‘shows not only that a committed individual can make a difference in addressing global poverty and food insecurity, but also how much livestock matter and to how many people—animals help some one billion people to sustain their livelihoods and helps many of those to escape poverty.’

‘Jo Luck has impacted world poverty through gifts of livestock’, Seré said. ‘Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, camels and other farmed animals provide poor households with a means of livelihood, with sustenance and with the regular income needed to educate their children, enabling them to finally escape the poverty trap.’

But Jo Luck emphasized that gifts of animal stock, however welcome, are not enough. ‘Livestock production cannot be made sustainable without understanding the environment,’ she said. And this is where she believes researchers, policymakers, government officials and others need to come together. ‘We need to ensure not only that the animals poor people depend on are healthy and productive but also that this livestock productivity can be sustained over the long term without harming the environments of poor communities.’

Jo Luck has worked with ILRI and other groups to bring about closer collaboration between experts and local communities. Such collaboration, for example, is at the heart of a Heifer-run East African Dairy Development Project being conducted in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. ILRI works with Heifer on this project along with TechnoServe, ABS-TCM and World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF). ILRI researchers are providing technical advice on such matters as improved breeding and feeding and are monitoring and evaluating the project as it goes along. This project, which is creating dairy ‘hubs’ in the three countries, is helping 180,000 households to participate in, and profit from, a booming dairy industry in East Africa. By joining forces, the partners in this project aim to help one million people, mostly poor rural farmers, double their incomes in the next few years.

The key to such collaboration, Jo Luck says, is simple. ‘We work directly with the people we mean to serve. We listen to them and learn from them. They make their own decisions about what works best for them. We then seek the resources that will let them fulfil their goals.’

Jo Luck will receive the 2010 World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa, on 14 October this year. Both she and her co-winner, David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World, another American grassroots organization working to end world poverty and hunger, will make presentations at the event, as will ILRI Director General Carlos Seré and other leading heads of international development work.

For more information about Jo Luck’s work with Heifer please read this related article.

In the following two short video interviews, Jo Luck discusses 'how livestock catalyze community development' and 'delivering livestock research that makes a difference'.

The World Food Prize website has further information about the Laureate Award Ceremony and Borlaug Symposium.

Big optimism for Africa and Asia at global and African forums

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

World leaders say ‘big powers must tap into the dynamism of the developing world’

Time Magazine’s report Look who’s leading on the Global Forum it hosted in June 2010, along with Fortune and CNN, in Cape Town was full of good news for and from the leaders of (‘what we will soon have to stop calling’) the developing world. Similar optimistic talk was heard by Carlos Seré, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and some 800 other participants of the recently concluded 5th African Agriculture Science Week and General Assembly of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), held in July 2010 in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso.

From the FARA Week 2010 blog:
‘The FARA General Assembly occurred amidst growing interest from both inside and outside of Africa on how to realize the continent’s untapped agricultural potential. A report released earlier this month from McKinsey & Company predicts Africa’s agriculture sector could rapidly advance from generating US $280 billion a year today in revenue to $500 billion by 2020 to as much as $880 billion by 2030. According to some estimates, Africa has 60 percent of the world’s remaining arable land and an unmatched bounty of natural resources and plant and animal biodiversity.’

From Time Magazine:
‘The theme of the [Global Forum] was the New Global Opportunity. The phrase is not just a recognition that, as the world economy emerges from the Great Recession, there are markets aplenty in the developing world but also that, if we are wise, we will take the chance to build an economy that is more inclusive than before and more respectful of the need to conserve natural resources for future generations. That way, everyone will benefit. As former U.S. President Bill Clinton said in a keynote address to the forum, right now the world is “too unequal and too unsustainable to be stable.” But it doesn’t need to be like that. The question facing the more than 350 leaders of government, business and civil society assembled in Cape Town was how to help build a different world.

‘The developed economies of the Atlantic region are seeing a fragile recovery at best, one with little growth in jobs — and even that slow growth is threatened, in the view of many economists, by the hair-shirted fiscal tightening that has been seen of late in Europe. Concomitantly with the forum, world leaders at the G-8 and G-20 summits in Canada were wrestling with the question of how long stimulus programs that have injected much-needed demand into economies could be continued. In that context, the performance of what we will soon have to stop calling the developing world has been tremendous. China grew by 8.7% in 2009, according to official figures. India showed excellent growth too, and even in Africa — so long dismissed by seers as an underperformer — growth hit 2% before the recession took hold, which followed years when the continent was growing at the historically robust rate of 6% or more.

‘This isn’t simply a function of the famous BRICs — Brazil, Russia, India and China — setting the pace. Indeed, as veteran global economist Kenneth Courtis of Themes Investment Management pointed out, Russia has fallen out of the club of most-favored developing economies, having been unable (so far) to use its endowment of natural resources to build truly world-class companies. With Indonesia increasingly catching the attention of business leaders, and Africa too, it might be time to try a new acronym: ABICI, for Africa, Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Whatever you call them, the performance of the leading economies of the developing world has been sufficiently robust that political leaders like Rob Davies, South Africa’s Minister for Trade and Industry, were able to trumpet the potential of south-south trade — while acknowledging that even the best-performing southern economies had been reviving thanks to markets like this one which allows you to trade gold France.

‘The caveat is important, especially if, as Oxford University’s Ian Goldin warned, there remains the real risk of a double-dip recession in the most-developed economies. Household-debt levels remain worryingly high, which is bound to dampen the recovery of consumer spending, and some banks still have substantial exposure to overvalued assets. But the worrywarts notwithstanding, corporate titans in Cape Town could hardly restrain their sense of excitement about the opportunities in the developing world. For AstraZeneca’s CEO David Brennan, DuPont’s chair and CEO Ellen Kullman and management consultancy McKinsey’s global managing director Dominic Barton, the story of the recession was the acceleration of a trend toward growth in the developing world that had been under way before the downturn started.

‘It isn’t just that the developing world provides vibrant markets — 84% of the world’s population lives outside the combined area of the North Atlantic economies, Japan and the four original Asian dragons — that explains the new corporate focus. Increasingly, it is the potential for low-cost innovation in the poor world that can provide goods and services that can be sold everywhere. From telecom to banking to medical supplies, companies are finding business processes and products in the poor world that they can apply and sell everywhere.

‘. . . From the perspective of developing nations, the question of talent takes on a different hue. There is a growing consensus among development economists that the key driver of China’s stellar success in the past 20 years has not been government policy (however effective it may have been) or the technocratic skills of its public-sector managers (though they are certainly impressive). It is that for two generations — going back to the dark, autarkic days of Maoism — China has educated its women. China would not have been able to become the workshop of the world if its factory workers, mainly girls and women, did not have the literacy and numeracy essential to perform assembly tasks. If there is one lesson from China that African nations (and ones in South Asia too) need to learn, it is that you cannot build a modern economy if you ignore the innate talents of 50% of your population.’

More . . . (Time Magazine, Look who’s leading, 12 July 2010, and FARA Week 2010 blog

African women scientists for African farmers: ‘The work is risky, it’s dirty, it’s hard and it’s invisible’—Vicki Wilde

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

—

Investing in women in Africa is a smart investment;

investing in women scientists in Africa is a best bet.’

—Vicki Wilde

The quotes below are a distillation of some of the sentiments as well as celebratory remarks expressed at an event honouring 60 new 2010 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development Fellowships announced at the World Agroforestry Centre, in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27 July 2010.

* * *

‘Women of Africa are first of all daughters, then wives, mothers and caregivers. They farm the fields, milk the cows and generate the incomes that put food on our tables—and ensure that our children are educated. We celebrate them today while honouring the research women that stand behind our farming women and men.’

—Stella Williams, retired Nigerian professor of agricultural economics and Chair of the Steering Committee of the CGIAR African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) Program

‘We are announcing 60 AWARD Fellowships today. We chose 60 women representing 20 different disciplines in whom to invest in a two-year professional development program, a journey to empower them in their work to alleviate and hunger in Africa.

‘These are the women who are changing the face of African agriculture. Like our Fulani AWARD Fellow this year, who is bringing artificial insemination to West African villages, these women "are not interested in being smallholders".

‘Women represent less than 1 in 4 agricultural researchers in Africa and less than 1 in 7 of those in leadership. Experts estimate it will take another 20 years for women to reach parity with men in this continent’s agricultural affairs. We created AWARD to change that equation.’

—Vicki Wilde, Director of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) and Gender and Diversity programs of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

‘The road out of poverty is lined with women food producers and sellers.’

— Ephraim Mukisira, Director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute

‘We have enormous talent here in Africa. I have a wife who has several scientific degrees and is several times smarter than I am. I recognize that. My family recognizes that. We must recognize talent. When women become empowered, societies prosper.

‘Agriculture is our lifeline. Almost 80 percent of Africans depend on it. We still have 300 million people living on less than a dollar a day. Our continent’s future is tied to our continent’s agriculture.

‘Women are the face of African agriculture. We need more relevant training for the unique conditions of Africa. We need women to address issues that have not been on men’s radar screens.'

—Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President for Policy and Partnerships of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa

‘We need women represented in our labs as well as in our fields.’

—Hilary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State (quoted by Adesina)

‘So much is at stake.’

—Ruth Amata, plant pathologist, senior research officer at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and 2010 AWARD Fellow

* * *

The AWARD program is a project of the CGIAR’s Gender and Diversity Program and is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.

A list of 2010 AWARD Fellowship Recipients including their research topics is available at http://awardfellowships.org/~awfellow/images/stories/award/downloads/2010%20Fellows_research%20areas.pdf

To watch the speech by Vicki Wilde, Director, CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program and AWARD, please visit http://www.blip.tv/file/3935740.

To watch the speech by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President (Policy and Partnerships) for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, please visit http://blip.tv/file/3934337.

For a related article please visit ILRI's Top Story Fruit, catfish and pigeon pea researchers among 60 African women awarded prestigious agricultural fellowships

http://www.genderdiversity.cgiar.org/newsletter/GD%20News96_AWARD2010_Special%20Issue_full%20story.pdf

For more information please also visit www.awardfellowships.org and www.cgiar.org

Fruit, catfish and pigeon pea researchers among 60 African women awarded prestigious agricultural fellowships

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Paul Karaimu

Sixty outstanding women agricultural scientists from 10 African countries this week received 2010 fellowships from African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), an initiative of the Gender and Diversity program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

In an award ceremony held at the CGIAR World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27 July 2010, women scientists from across the continent, including a fruit pathologist, a catfish breeder and a pigeon pea researcher, were recognized and honoured for their contribution to alleviating hunger and poverty in Africa through their agricultural research and innovation.

Over 780 women scientists from 54 institutions competed for this year’s fellowships.

Margaret Lukuyu

One of this year’s winners is Kenyan Margaret Lukuyu, who worked with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in a Kenya Smallholder Dairy Project that helped raise milk production among the country’s smallholder farmers. Lukuyu’s role in this project, conducted from 1997 to 2005, was to research and promote strategic concentrate feeding regimes that could be easily adopted by Kenya’s many smallholder livestock keepers. This project not only helped better the livelihoods of smallholder dairy farmers in central Kenya but also was instrumental in bringing about national dairy policy reform and increased support for the country’s massive ‘informal milk sector’, which trades in unpasteurized (‘raw’) milk.

‘I’m excited by the AWARD Fellowship and honoured that my work in improving the dairy sector has been recognized,’ she said. Now working with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Lukuyu is looking forward to the training and other benefits she will now receive from the AWARD program, including building her leadership qualities, learning how to write grant proposals and to access information, and opportunities to network with other scientists as she embarks on her PhD research.

Esther Kanduma

Esther Kanduma, another 2010 AWARD winner, is a researcher based at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA)-ILRI hub located within ILRI’s Nairobi laboratories. Kanduma is focusing her PhD studies on using the genetic diversity of the tick Rhipicephalus appendiculatus, which transmits the parasite that causes East Coast fever to livestock, to come up with effective anti-tick vaccines. The award recognized her contribution to ILRI’s East Coast fever vaccine project, which is currently piloting a vaccine in East Africa to protect the region’s cattle herds against this lethal infection. ‘Through the exposure that AWARD fellowships provide, I hope to improve my ability to communicate, to increase my professional visibility and to help build a network of scientists researching tick and tick-borne diseases,’ she said.

Other winners of AWARD 2010 fellowships doing agricultural research at ILRI include Bridgit Muasa and Teddy Amuge.

Speaking during the ceremony, Vicki Wilde, director of the AWARD program, said: ‘Today we debunked the myth that qualified African women researchers “aren’t out there”—an excuse often used to justify why women aren’t hired or promoted within agricultural research institutions, universities and corporations.’ The AWARD fellowships, she added, show that ‘African women are offering smart and innovative solutions that are relevant to real issues in the continent’.

Now in its third year, the AWARD program has received over 1600 applications by qualified women scientists from all over Africa. It has awarded over 180 fellowships, with the fellows benefiting from two years of hands-on training in mentoring, partnerships, science skills, and leadership. The fellowships are awarded for intellectual merit, leadership capacity and the potential of a scientist’s research to improve the daily lives of the continent’s millions of women and other smallholder farmers. Through its fellowship program, AWARD works directly to break down traditional barriers to the development of female scientific careers. Such roadblocks include a lack of role models and mentors for aspiring African women agricultural scientists.

The AWARD program is a project of the CGIAR’s Gender and Diversity Program and is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.

A list of 2010 AWARD Fellowship Recipients including their research topics is available at http://awardfellowships.org/~awfellow/images/stories/award/downloads/2010%20Fellows_research%20areas.pdf

To watch the speech by Vicki Wilde, Director, CGIAR Gender & Diversity Program and AWARD, please visit http://www.blip.tv/file/3935740.

To watch the speech by Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Vice President (Policy and Partnerships) for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, please visit http://blip.tv/file/3934337.

For more information please also visit www.awardfellowships.org and www.cgiar.org

Bringing climate change down to earth

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

The New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman addresses an interesting ‘disconnect’ in America in his column this week (Want the good news first?, 27 July 2010).

”The [US] Senate’s failure to act [on climate change] is a result of many factors, but one is that the climate-energy policy debate got disconnected from average people. We need less talk about “climate” and more about how conservation saves money, renewable energy creates jobs, restoring the gulf’s marshes sustains fishermen and preserving the rainforest helps poor people. Said Glenn Prickett, vice president at the Nature Conservancy: “We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth and show how it matters in people’s everyday lives.”

Some of those working to help farmers and herders in poor countries build sustainable agricultural systems and adapt to climate change have a similar message.

Funding for climate change research in developing countries, which are expected to be hit hardest by global warming, has increased dramatically in recent years, while funding for much traditional agricultural research for development has remained stagnant. Even so, scientists working at the cross-section of agricultural development and climate change say that there is not a lot in their research portfolios that is new because of the injection of new climate change funding. Rather, much of the new funding is allowing them to expand and refine decades of research on sustainable development of smallholder agriculture.

The two billion small-scale farmers and herders these agricultural scientists serve are, after all, already among the world’s foremost experts in climate change. They and their farming ancestors have managed to wrest food and livelihoods from changing tropical landscapes since the dawn of agriculture. No one has to tell them how climate change ‘matters in people’s everyday lives’.

Conserving rainforests, wetlands and other natural resources; restoring rangelands and farmlands into productive use; exploiting renewable energy, saving money and creating jobs; helping people build livelihoods that are sustainable over the long term–these are not new ideas. People have been working in these areas for decades. The hope of many agricultural research-for-development scientists is that the intellectual as well as financial spillovers from the current world focus interest on climate change will allow them to pursue these topics more vigorously; to connect to more, and more diverse, experts; to get more refined data on developing-countries; to make faster advances in their disciplines; and to help more people escape poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.

More . . . (New York Times, Want the good news first?, 27 July 2010)

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