Category Archives: ILRI

Marking International Women’s Day: Thursday 8 March 2007

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Marking International Women's Day: Thursday 8 March 2007
 
 
This year's theme for International Women's Day is "Ending Impunity for violence against women and girls".
 

Violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. No one can dispute the evidence. Violence takes a devastating toll on the lives of women, their families and society as a whole. Gender equality and human rights for all are essential to advancing development, peace and security.

 

 International Women's Day 2007
Take action to end impunity for violence against women and girls

•   Violence against women is the most common but least punished crime in the world.

•   It is estimated that between 113 million and 200 million women are demographically "missing." They have been  the victims of infanticide (boys are preferred to girls) or have not received the same amount of food and medical attention as their brothers and fathers.

• The number of women forced or sold into prostitution is estimated worldwide at anywhere between 700,000 and 4,000,000 per year. Profits from sex slavery are estimated at seven to twelve billion US dollars per year. • Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined.

• At least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Usually, the abuser is a member of her own family or someone known to her. Domestic violence is the largest form of abuse of women worldwide, irrespective of  region, culture, ethnicity, education, class and religion.

• It is estimated that more than two million girls are genitally mutilated per year, a rate of one girl every fifteen seconds.

• Systematic rape is used as a weapon of terror in many of the world's conflicts. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 women in Rwanda were raped during the 1994 genocide.

• Studies show the increasing links between violence against women and HIV and demonstrate that HIV-infected women are more likely to have experienced violence, and that victims of violence are at higher risk of HIV infection.

 

 

Source: Vlachovà, Marie and Biason, Lea, Eds. (2004) Women in an Insecure World: Violence Against Women – Facts, Figures and Analysis. Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces


Ending Violence Against Women: Advancing Development

 

“Violence against women has yet to receive the priority and resources needed at all levels to tackle it with the seriousness and visibility necessary”
                                                                 Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women (2006)


To find out what ILRI is doing to address gender in Ethiopia click here

Ending violence against women is essential to advancing development. To mark International Women’s Day 2007, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and other Nairobi-based Centers under the umbrella of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), visited the Nairobi Women’s hospital which runs a Gender Violence and Recovery Center (GVRC) for battered women and rape victims. The hospital was opened on 5 March 2001 and receives an average of 6-7 patients per day – most of them rape victims.

‘Ending Violence Against Women, is an initiative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). An interactive, multimedia online exhibit tells the stories of women throughout the world in their battle to bring equality and stop violence to women, as well as the efforts of the UNFPA and other like-minded NGOs in these endeavors.
http://www.unfpa.org/endingviolence/index.html

For more information on International Women’s Day, including its origins, visit http://www.internationalwomensday.com/about.asp

Genebank community wins science partnership award

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Research centres are honoured for their work to preserve the diversity of the world’s key food and forage crops.

Twelve centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) recently won the CGIAR’s Outstanding Partnership Award for their management of genebanks and effective stewardship of plant genetic resources they hold in trust for the world community.

The Partnership’s genebanks are vital for achieving food security and protecting plant genetic diversity and represent the most important international effort to safeguard the world’s agricultural legacy. ILRI and the other 11 centres of the CGIAR hold more than 600,000 samples of crop-plant diversity. These include wild relatives and more than half of the global total of farmer-created varieties, which are a rich source of sought-after characteristics.

Base genebanks are used for long-term security storage of original germplasm collections. They act as a repository of materials that have been reasonably characterized and which may or may not have current interest or use by plant breeders. Collected materials are preserved until such time as there are enough resources available for them to be characterized and evaluated. Active genebanks are used for current research and distribution of seeds, with all seeds in active collections freely available in small quantities to all research workers and distributed both directly and through networks.

Jean Hanson, a plant geneticist working at the Addis Ababa campus of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), said, ‘This Outstanding Partnership Award recognizes almost 20 years of collaboration between staff of the CGIAR genebanks, first as an ad hoc working group and community of practice and later as the formal steering committee for the CGIAR System-wide Genetic Resources Programme.

‘Partnerships involving staff of 12 CGIAR centres are rare. This award recognizes an active and collegial partnership that has stood the test of time and changes in staffing and funding within the CGIAR genebank community.’

This Outstanding Partnership Award, announced at the CGIAR’s Annual General Meeting in Washington, DC, in December 2006, recognizes the teamwork that provided stewardship of global public goods central to the CGIAR’s work and also provided leadership to the whole plant genetic resources community. While discharging its duties as custodians of the CGIAR in-trust collections, the Partnership has advanced research in the many scientific disciplines providing leadership for germplasm conservation and use, raised awareness world-wide of the importance of genetic resources to development, and represented the CGIAR in important international fora, from the Earth Summit, held in Rio in 1992, to the first meeting of the Governing Body the International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, in 2006. For more on organizing impactful events that highlight achievements like this, check out this resources at https://awardceremonyorganisers.co.uk/.

Collective action by the Partnership generated common policies and practices with which to administer the CGIAR collections under legal agreements governing their in-trust status. Employing these common policies and practices has ensured the highest standards in germplasm conservation and dissemination of that germplasm and related information. Achieving these two objectives demanded combining conservation and information science with smart legal and policy know-how, skillful negotiation and tactful diplomacy.

To secure the in-trust collections, the Partnership took an open, self-critical approach to meet the highest international standards. The Centres continue their work to take conservation technology forward by convening meetings to explore methodologies; publishing guidelines on field and in vitro genebank management and regeneration and other topics; scoping new areas for action, such as research on underutilized species and holistic approaches to agricultural biodiversity; and tackling research bottlenecks such as difficulties in storing clonal material. The Partnership has also conducted upstream research, examining the application of molecular genetics to genebanking, which led to wider developments such as the CGIAR initiation of a Generation Challenge Program.

Pulling technical, economic, policy and information components together, this Partnership helped materialize a vision of a co-ordinated global system for the conservation and use of plant genetic resources. This Partnership is providing coherent leadership of a global genetic resources system underpinning food security for humanity into the future.
Last October, world leaders in agricultural research signed agreements to guarantee long-term access to some of the world’s most important collections of agricultural biodiversity by placing all their ex-situ genebank collections under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The agreements require commercial users to share benefits with the global community. Eleven centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) were party to the agreements, which will allow breeders and other researchers to tap the collections for solutions to some of the world’s most pressing development problems, including drought, desertification and food and nutritional security. ‘World’s Most Diverse Forage Collection Comes under New Treaty’. (/archives/452)ILRI maintains both an active and base genebank at its principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. As part of its commitment to maintaining the collection as a global public good, ILRI claims no ownership nor seeks any intellectual property rights over the germplasm and related information. ILRI conserves its diverse forage collection to make it and relevant information freely available to scientists and the national agricultural research systems of developing and other countries.

CGIAR Genebank Community
The genebanks of the CGIAR Centres
01  International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Colombia (represented by Daniel Debouck)
02  International Potato Center (CIP), Peru (represented by Willy Roca)
03  International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico (represented by Thomas Payne)
04  International Center for Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria (represented by Jan Valkoun)
05  World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Kenya (represented by Tony Simons)
06  International Centre for Research in the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), India (represented by CLL  Gowda)
07  International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Nigeria (represented by Dominique Dumet)
08  International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya (represented by Jean Hanson)
09  Bioversity International, Italy (represented by Laura Snook)
10  International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines (represented by Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton)
11  West African Rice Development Association (WARDA), Benin (represented by Ines Sanchez)

Related organizations
12  United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Italy (represented by Linda Collette)
13  International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC (represented by Melinda Smale)
14  CGIAR Systemwide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) Secretariat, Italy, (represented by Jane Toll)

Wellcome Trust, Science seek to stem upsurge in animal disease emergencies hitting developing countries

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Researchers are converging in Cambridge, UK, to find ways of translating research findings faster into pro-poor animal health policy and practice.
 
Rift Valley fever, which continues to spread in East Africa, killing more than 90 people in Kenya alone, brings into sharp focus the inadequacies of animal health delivery systems in developing countries and the role of the global community in redressing these. This mosquito-transmitted disease is also hurting the livelihoods of poor people by killing their young cattle and sheep and causing ‘abortion storms’ in their pregnant stock.

Brian Perry, a veterinary epidemiologist at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), argues today (19 January 2007) in Science, a leading scientific journal, that animal diseases impeding livestock enterprises in developing countries are being ignored by the global community, leaving developing countries stranded with outmoded disease control systems that serve neither the needs of the poor nor the global community. In his article, ‘Science for Development: Poverty Reduction through Animal Health’, Perry and co-writer Keith Sones argue that the global community needs to give greater thought and investment to building scientific capacity in animal health research within developing countries.

Perry’s article explores opportunities afforded by science to help resolve this mismatch. Perry also points out high-priority areas requiring new funding. The article sets the tone for a high-level conference on animal health research taking place in Cambridge, UK, next week, at which Dr Perry and other ILRI colleagues will be presenting their research findings to an international group of experts. The conference is co-sponsored by the Wellcome Trust (UK) and Science.

To obtain the article by Brian Perry, ‘Science for Development: Poverty Reduction through Animal Health’ (Science, Vol. 315. no. 5810, pp. 333–334), please contact the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at +1 202-326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org. Or get the article online (subscription required) at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5810/333.

For interviews, contact Catherine Mgendi at +254 20 422 3035 or cell: +254 726 243 046; c.mgendi@cgiar.org.
Or contact Brian Perry direct at +254 20 422 3000; b.perry@cgiar.org

Exploring farmer-herder relations and conflict management in Niger

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This week, ILRI and partners are presenting research on farmer-herder relations and conflict management at an international conference on 'the future of transhumance pastoralism in west and central Africa'.


farmer-herder relations

 

The main objective of the conference, taking place in Abuja, Nigeria, from 20-24 November 2006, is to provide a forum for discussing the challenges of transhumance pastoralism and associated issues affecting the economy and society of pastoral communities in the West Africa sub-region. Through the presentation and analyses of different experiences, conference participants will share experiences to identify interventions that could enhance pastoral livelihoods and promote environmental and social harmony among communities.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are presenting their findings on farmer-herder relations and conflict management, based on research conducted in Niger. Their study found that conflict, in some form or another, is common in agro-pastoral communities of Niger and has the potential to affect the livelihoods of farmers and herders alike.

Background to study

The nature of livestock husbandry and farmer-herder relations is changing and the potential for conflict management failure increases unless systems of governance change accordingly. Farmer-herder conflicts are enduring features of social life in the Sudano-Sahelian zone. A survey was carried out in four sites in Niger (Bokki, Katanga, Sabon Gida and Tountoubé) to determine the proximate and long-term causes of conflict over natural-resource use, to evaluate the appropriateness of existing institutional arrangements for managing conflicts and identify innovative options and incentives to reduce the incidence and severity of conflicts.

Causes of farmer-herder conflict

Conflict should be expected in an environment of highly fluctuating resource availabilities on unfenced land. Results from this study showed that in all sites, damage to crops was the first reported cause of conflict between farmers and herders. Crop damage is not limited to growing crops on the field but also unauthorized livestock grazing of crop residues after harvest.

Reported causes of farmer-herder conflict in study sites between 2002 and 2004


The increasing number of conflicts due to unauthorized livestock grazing of crop residues is a reflection of the change in farmer-herder relations from that of mutual trust that characterized manure and entrustment contracts to more inherently conflictual relationships based on wage and tenancy contracts. Other causes of conflict reported were access to watering points, expansion of crop fields to corridors used for animal passage, and theft of animals.

Farmer-herder relations and conflict management
 

The ability of rural communities to prevent and manage conflict is largely based on the strength of networks of communication between herding and farming interests, respected community leaders, and leaders in neighbouring communities. Overall, local institutional arrangements were found to be functional with a high percentage of conflicts effectively managed at local levels. In all the study sites except Bokki, there was a high level of involvement of internal mediators.
Reported causes of farmer-herder conflict in study sites between 2002 and 2004

In all the villages, at least 75% of reported cases of farmer-herder conflict between 2002 and 2004 were resolved. In Tountoubé all reported cases of conflict were resolved. The results support a basic premise that conflicts that necessarily arise as people pursue diverse livelihood strategies are largely managed effectively at the level of local communities. In all the villages, the elders, marabouts and chiefs are the main channel for mediation. For example, all resolved conflict cases in Sabon Guida and Tountoubé were through village elders and chiefs. The high level of success of internal mediation in both villages could be attributed to the high respect for the authority of village chiefs and council of elders by all social groups. However, in Bokki there is a relatively high involvement of external mediators – local court and police- in resolving conflict in the village.

Understanding changing farmer-herder relations


Over the past 20 years, there have been changes in livestock ownership and management that have worked to increase both the inherent conflicts of interest between farming and herding and the potential for these conflicts of interest to escalate. Conflicts of interest have intensified in many areas due to the greater proximity of livestock and cropping during the growing season.

There have also been a number of changes that have affected how local communities manage farmer-herder conflicts. The continued erosion of the local authority of elders, while welcome on a number of levels, have increased the number of poles of authority which may potentially reduce local communities’ ability to manage conflict effectively. The number and nature of social ties between farmers and herding professionals have changed as livestock wealth has become more concentrated, availability of cropland has declined, and the range of herd movements has shrunk and become more erratic.

The relationships between farmers and herders in the Sudano-Sahelian region of West Africa have always been multi-dimensional and like most social relationships have involved both cooperation and conflict. There has always been a strong seasonality to this relationship, with conflicts associated with crop damage and field encroachment onto key pastoral sites common during the rainy season, while cooperative relationships of milk barter and manure contracting are more important during the dry season.

Understanding farmer-herder relations is key to conflict management and resolution. This will improve understanding of the proximate and underlying causes of conflict, the behavioural patterns that are most conducive to provoking or avoiding conflict and the main mechanisms by which conflict between the groups are resolved or managed. Innovative options and incentives that reduce the incidence and severity of conflicts would enhance livelihoods of both farmers and herders, and promote social harmony within and between communities.
 

farmer-herder relations

ILRI hosts consultations on World Development Report 2008

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ILRI's director general opens a two-day consultation on the World Development Report 2008.

The theme of the 2008 World Development Report is Agriculture for Development. ILRI and the World Bank are hosting a two-day consultation, starting 13 November 2006, to inform this flagship policy publication, by discussing key issues and challenges that confront agriculture and how it can be the real engine for development.

The World Development Report (WDR) is the annual flagship development policy publication of the World Bank which serves as an invaluable guide to the economic, social and environmental state of the world today and is widely read by the broader development community. As the last WDR dedicated to agriculture was produced over two decades ago (WDR 1982), the 2008 report offers a major opportunity to provide new thinking on agriculture for development. The 2008 report seeks to assess where, when and how agriculture can be effective instruments for economic development, especially development that favours the poor.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is one of many players in this consultative process that will set the stage for World Development Report 2008.  ILRI and the World Bank are hosting a two-day consultation at the ILRI campus in Nairobi, Kenya (13-14 November 2006). The WDR 2008 aims to explore pathways out of rural poverty and how to make these pathways more effective through rational public policies directed to agriculture. Consultation participants include academics, researchers, development practitioners, policy-and decision-makers, donors organizations, government, NGOs and the private sector.

ILRI’s role in agriculture for development
World demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded and vulnerable to the effects of the climate change. The potential of livestock to reduce poverty is big. Livestock contributes to livelihoods of more than two-thirds of the world’s rural poor, and it can be an important lever for reducing poverty and boosting the economy in developing countries, a priority of WDR 2008.

In 2002, ILRI revised its strategy to focus its livestock research efforts on poverty reduction. ILRI and its partners maintain strength in the mixed crop-livestock system practised by poor livestock keepers. In view of an ongoing using increase in demand for livestock products in developing world, a shift to more work with peri-urban and landless systems is proposed.
 

Livestock—A Pathway out of Poverty: ILRI’s Strategy to 2010

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development


Growth in agriculture makes a disproportionately positive contribution to reducing poverty. More than half of the population in developing countries lives in rural areas, where poverty is most extreme. By illuminating the links between agriculture, economic growth, and poverty reduction, this report offers a timely and nuanced assessment of how and where agriculture can best foster development.
                                 – François Bourguignon, Sr. Vice President, Chief Economist, The World Bank

The World Bank recognizes that ‘a reconsideration of agriculture’s role in development has been long overdue. Developing-country agriculture is caught up in the far-reaching changes brought by globalization, the advent of highly sophisticated and integrated supply chains, innovation in information technology and biosciences, and broad institutional changes—especially in the role of the state and in modes of governance and organization.’

Publication of WDR 2008 is expected in September 2007. In the meantime, the WDR 2008 website will contain the report outline, various drafts, and information on the consultations.
Detailed information about World Development Report 2008 and the team preparing it are available at the link below:
 

World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Developement

Click here to view the presentation given by ILRI's director general Dr. Carlos Seré, during the opening of the two-day consultation.
 

New report maps out Africa’s climate vulnerability hotspots

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Climate change will alter growing periods and require shifts in agricultural production systems that Africa's poor can ill-afford.
 
A new report has identified hotspots in Africa where people will be at greatest risk from the effects of climate change over the next 50 years, and established that the hotspots coincide with the very areas where some of the continent’s poorest people live, affirming growing concerns on the potentially damaging effects of climate change in Africa.

The report – Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa – finds that many communities across Africa that are already grappling with severe poverty are also at the cross-hairs of the most adverse effects of climate change.

“The results of this analysis show that many regions throughout Africa are likely to be adversely affected in more ways than the research was even able to explore,” says ILRI’s Mario Herrero.

The report establishes that save for seven countries that have no data, all of Sub-Saharan Africa is vulnerable to climate change. Virtually the whole land mass of Burundi and Rwanda are classified as “more vulnerable” as are large tracts of Ethiopia, parts of southern Eritrea, southwest Niger and the southern parts of Chad. On the other end of the vulnerability scale, only a tiny part of South Africa is classified as “less vulnerable”.

The report is produced by the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in collaboration with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi and the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS). The report was commissioned by the UK Government’s Department for International Development to inform the establishment of a program on climate adaptation for Africa.

Using emission scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the report projects how climate change will affect the length of food growing seasons in Africa, and therefore the livelihoods of the greater majority of Africans who rely heavily on farming for basic food supply and employment.

The report finds that the typical small-holder mixed crop-livestock rainfed farming systems and arid and semi-arid systems that support pastoralism in the Sahel are both highly vulnerable to poverty and most likely to suffer the most from climate change.

The same is predicted for the Great Lakes region, with Rwanda’s and Burundi’s crop-livestock farming systems and the higher potential highland systems at great risk. Eastern Africa’s arid and semi-arid lands, which in Kenya account for 84 per cent of the land area, were also found to be highly vulnerable to climate change.

“These findings present an immense challenge for development and the achievement of the millennium development goals,” says Tom Owiyo, co-author of the book. “Climate change presents a global ethical challenge as well as a development, scientific and organisational challenge in Africa.”

The coastal zones of eastern and southern Africa as well as the drier parts of southern Africa will also be adversely affected by climate change.

“The outlook for Africa under a business-as-usual scenario is pretty bleak. Africa appears to have some of the greatest burdens of climate change impacts and is also generally limited in its ability to cope and adapt, yet it has the lowest per capita emission of greenhouse gases,” Mario Herrero reiterates concerns shared by other scientists across the world.

To view the entire electronic version of the book, click to open:
o Mapping climate vulnerability and poverty in Africa. PDF (10.7MB)

To view the book by chapter, go to:
o Executive Summary
o Background
o Objectives and activities
o Framework
o Climate impacts in sub-Saharan Africa
o Poverty and vulnerability
o User needs
o Conclusions
o References and Acronyms
o Appendices
o Note 1: Indicators of adaptive capacity
o Note 2: South-south cooperation
o Note 3: Climate change & health in Africa: incidence of vector-borne diseases & HIV/AIDS
o Note 4: The climate, development, and poverty nexus in Africa
o Note 5: The Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme
o Note 6: The ASARECA priority setting work
o Note 7: The SLP’s food-feed impact assessment framework
o Note 8: The SAKSS poverty targeting tool
o Note 9: Simulating regional production with crop models

Related information:

Below are the 35 news clippings generated by the 7 Nov 2006 launch of ILRI’s book Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa at the UNEP-hosed Climate Change Conference COP 12 in Nairobi, Kenya.

International Wire Services
01 Africast
02 Agence France Presse
03 AllAfrica.com (first article)
04 AllAfrica.com (second article)
05 Reuters
06 Reuters AlertNet
07 Reuters South Africa
08 Reuters UK

International News Agencies
09 IRIN News
10 Peace Journalism
11 Yahoo! News

 Blogs
12 Ethiopia: Ethiopian Politics Blogspot
13 Ethiopia: Nazret.com: Ethiopian News Portal: EthiopBlog
14 Germany: Afrikaman

Radio Broadcasts
15 Kenya: KBC (Kenya Broadcasting Company) Radio: Swahili
16 Kenya: KISS FM radio station
17 UK: BBC World Service

National Media/News Agencies
18 Australia: NineMSM
19 Australia: Planet Ark
20 Australia: Sydney Morning Herald
21 Australia: The Age
22 Australia: The West Australian
23 Brunei Darussalam: The Brunei Times
24 Germany: Deutsche Welle Radio
25 India: Zee News
26 Kenya: Daily Nation
27 Kenya: Standard Newspaper (article)
28 Kenya: Standard Newspaper (photo and caption)
29 Pakistan: The News
30 South Africa: Business Day
31 South Africa: The Mail & Guardian
32 South Africa: The Mercury
33 South Africa: SABC News
34 USA: ABC News
35 USA: Scientific American.com

Climate change research by ILRI informs Stern Review on the economics of climate change

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Livestock systems analysts pinpoint communities most vulnerable to the double threat of climate change and severe poverty.
 
In July 2005, the British finance minister asked Sir Nicholas Stern to lead a major review of the economics of climate change, to understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met in the UK and globally. Stern is a Head of the Government Economics Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development. The report calls for urgent action on climate change and a raft of new ‘green’ measures were announced at the launch of the report earlier this week.

Innovative analyses by agricultural systems analysts working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partner institutions were used in development of the seminal Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change, published on 30 October 2006 and available online at  http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm)

A report ILRI published in August 2006 for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa, as well as an earlier study by two of the leading authors of the report, ‘The potential impacts of climate change on maize production in Africa and Latin America in 2055’ (written by Peter Jones and Philip Thornton and published in Global Environmental Change in 2003) are cited in part 2 of the Stern Review.

ILRI produced its 200-page Mapping Climate Variability report in partnership with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and The Energy Research Institute (TERI). Mapping Climate Vulnerability locates the African communities likely to be most vulnerable to the double threats of climate change and poverty. Regions likely to be hurt by climate change include the mixed arid-semiarid systems in the Sahel; arid-semiarid rangeland systems, the Great Lakes and Coastal regions of eastern Africa; and many drier zones of southern Africa.

Several other high-level assessments are using ILRI’s report and maps. These include a report of a UK Foresight project on Detection and Identification of Infectious Diseases in April 2006, the July 2006 UK White Paper on International Development, and an August 2006 review draft of the IAASTD Global Report (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development).

These reports stress that farmers in many places will need to adapt to climate change, by investing in alternative crops and livestock, adjusting their management regimes, or by diversifying their income-generating activities (particularly off-farm activities). Raising awareness about the possible impact of climate change, and improving consultation between all levels of government and civil society, will be essential.

The Stern Review argues that climate change could devastate the global economy on a scale of the two world wars and the depression of the 1930s if left unchecked. Introducing the report by Nicholas Stern, the British Government also said Monday that the benefits of coordinated action around the world to tackle global warming will greatly outweigh any financial costs.

Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist at the World Bank, who oversaw production of the 700-page report commissioned by the British Government, concludes that ignoring climate change could lead to huge economic upheaval.

‘Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century,’ he said. The report said global warming could result in melting glaciers, rising sea levels, falling crop yields, drinking water shortages, higher death tolls from malnutrition and heat stress, and outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever.

And richer nations must be prepared to pay more than poor ones to counter their higher emissions output, for example by green taxes or carbon trading schemes.

The poor countries will be hit earliest and hardest . . . It is only right that the rich countries should pay a little more,’ Stern said.
The report spells out key elements of future international frameworks, which include:

  • Technology cooperation: Informal co-ordination as well as formal agreements can boost the effectiveness of investments in innovation around the world.
  • Adaptation: The poorest countries are most vulnerable to climate change. It is essential that climate change be fully integrated into development policy, and that rich countries honour their pledges to increase support through overseas

    • development assistance. International funding should also support improved regional information on climate change impacts, and research into new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood.Key messages from the section of the Stern Review informed by ILRI’s systems research are provided below. For the full section or book, go to ILRI’s latest research findings on climate change, Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa, published in July 2006, are found on ILRI’s website in full at: The conclusions are reproduced in a briefing of the same title found at:

African animal feeds: Two decades of research now freely available on the web

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The most comprehensive and authoritative web-based resource on the nutritional values of livestock feeds in African agriculture has just been launched.

This month sees the launch of the ‘Sub-Saharan Africa Feed Information System’. This new web-based resource provides free access to a comprehensive database providing the nutritional values of feedstuffs used by small-scale farmers in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. SSA Feeds provides data on 14,571 samples of 459 livestock feeds, including herbaceous forages, fodder trees and shrubs, cereals and legumes, roots and tubers, other food crops, concentrate feeds and agro-industrial by-products, mineral supplements and other less common feeds. These feeds were analyzed in the animal nutrition laboratories of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the information made available through an initiative of the Systemwide Livestock Programme (SLP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

 

SSA Feeds: Authoritative, comprehensive and freely available online
This unique resource is the culmination of 26 years of extensive research and data collection. The newly launched product makes available twelve years of initial data collection that started in 1981. This resource is now being updated with thousands of additional entries encompassing 14 years of subsequent research. This makes SSA Feeds the Web’s most comprehensive and authoritative resource on the nutritional values of livestock feeds in African agriculture.

Salvador Fernández-Rivera, a Mexican livestock nutritionist based at ILRI’s principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, who coordinates SSA Feeds, is excited. ‘This is the first time that we have pulled together more than two decades of our research on animal feeds. SSA Feeds will be an invaluable resource for extension and development agents as well as livestock researchers. SSA Feeds will help them design optimal and scientifically based feeding systems for meat, dairy and draft animals. Better nourished and healthier livestock will enable Africa’s small-scale farmers improve their food and economic security.’

What the experts have to say about SSA Feeds
SSA Feeds was developed in conjunction with world experts in animal nutrition. These experts are already using the new resource and benefiting from having access to such depth and breadth of critical information on African animal feeds.

Adugna Tolera, an expert in animal nutrition and associate professor at the University of Hawassa, Ethiopia, advises his country’s feedlot industry on use of local feed resources. 

SSA Feeds is an important and rich source of information on the nutritive value of a wide range of sub-Saharan African feed resources. It is user-friendly for searching and summarizing the data on a given feed and enables the user to see the average value as well as the variability (range and standard deviation).

It would be useful if the database were further enriched by including similar data accumulated in many of the national agricultural research systems in this region of Africa.

—Dr Adugna Tolera


Hank Fitzhugh, former director general of ILRI and its Addis Ababa-based predecessor, the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), is an animal geneticist and livestock production systems specialist. He is leading a project to improve meat and livestock exports from Ethiopia. The project, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Texas A&M University, will fund the upgrading of the SSA Feeds database.

SSA Feeds demonstrates impacts from research.

This important database moves over 20 years of research off the shelf and into use by African livestock producers responding to the ‘livestock revolution—the huge increase in demand for meat and milk by consumers in developing countries.

— Dr Hank Fitzhugh


David Hutcheson is a worldwide expert on beef cattle nutrition, involved in projects in several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. With a long and distinguished career in the university system and US beef industry, he also served on the Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States that established the current “Nutritional Requirements of Beef Cattle".

 

I have used SSA Feeds to develop a “Best Cost” ration concept for Ethiopia Feedlots. The database is user friendly and easily adapted to the “Best Cost” Excel program. The arrangement of the nutrient analyses and summary statistics allow for easy manipulation and export of the data into different programs, for applications in both research and producer situations.

— Dr David Hutcheson

Click on the graphic to visit the SSA Feeds website

African animal feeds: Two decades of research now freely available on the web

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The most comprehensive and authoritative web-based resource on the nutritional values of livestock feeds in African agriculture has just been launched.
 
This month sees the launch of the ‘Sub-Saharan Africa Feed Information System’. This new web-based resource provides free access to a comprehensive database providing the nutritional values of feedstuffs used by small-scale farmers in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. SSA Feeds provides data on 14,571 samples of 459 livestock feeds, including herbaceous forages, fodder trees and shrubs, cereals and legumes, roots and tubers, other food crops, concentrate feeds and agro-industrial by-products, mineral supplements and other less common feeds. These feeds were analyzed in the animal nutrition laboratories of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the information made available through an initiative of the Systemwide Livestock Programme (SLP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

SSA Feeds: Authoritative, comprehensive and freely available online
This unique resource is the culmination of 26 years of extensive research and data collection. The newly launched product makes available twelve years of initial data collection that started in 1981. This resource is now being updated with thousands of additional entries encompassing 14 years of subsequent research. This makes SSA Feeds the Web’s most comprehensive and authoritative resource on the nutritional values of livestock feeds in African agriculture.

Salvador Fernández-Rivera, a Mexican livestock nutritionist based at ILRI’s principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, who coordinates SSA Feeds, is excited. ‘This is the first time that we have pulled together more than two decades of our research on animal feeds. SSA Feeds will be an invaluable resource for extension and development agents as well as livestock researchers. SSA Feeds will help them design optimal and scientifically based feeding systems for meat, dairy and draft animals. Better nourished and healthier livestock will enable Africa’s small-scale farmers improve their food and economic security.’

What the experts have to say about SSA Feeds
SSA Feeds was developed in conjunction with world experts in animal nutrition. These experts are already using the new resource and benefiting from having access to such depth and breadth of critical information on African animal feeds.

Adugna Tolera, an expert in animal nutrition and associate professor at the University of Hawassa, Ethiopia, advises his country’s feedlot industry on use of local feed resources. 

SSA Feeds is an important and rich source of information on the nutritive value of a wide range of sub-Saharan African feed resources. It is user-friendly for searching and summarizing the data on a given feed and enables the user to see the average value as well as the variability (range and standard deviation). 

It would be useful if the database were further enriched by including similar data accumulated in many of the national agricultural research systems in this region of Africa.

 Hank Fitzhugh, former director general of ILRI and its Addis Ababa-based predecessor, the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA), is an animal geneticist and livestock production systems specialist. He is leading a project to improve meat and livestock exports from Ethiopia. The project, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Texas A&M University, will fund the upgrading of the SSA Feeds database.

SSA Feeds demonstrates impacts from research.

This important database moves over 20 years of research off the shelf and into use by African livestock producers responding to the ‘livestock revolution—the huge increase in demand for meat and milk by consumers in developing countries.

— Dr Hank Fitzhugh

David Hutcheson is a worldwide expert on beef cattle nutrition, involved in projects in several countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. With a long and distinguished career in the university system and US beef industry, he also served on the Committee of the National Research Council (NRC) of the United States that established the current “Nutritional Requirements of Beef Cattle".

I have used SSA Feeds to develop a “Best Cost” ration concept for Ethiopia Feedlots. The database is user friendly and easily adapted to the “Best Cost” Excel program. The arrangement of the nutrient analyses and summary statistics allow for easy manipulation and export of the data into different programs, for applications in both research and producer situations.

— Dr David Hutcheson

 Click on the graphic to visit the SSA Feeds website

Send us your feedback by emailing: SLPOffice@ILRIETH.EXCH.CGIAR.ORG

Building African bioinformatics skills and expertise locally

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Specialists at a new-age computing facility are seeking partnerships with international universities to develop world-class bioinformatics capacity in Africa – and Africa's first generation of bioinformaticians.
 
One of the great recent successes of African biosciences was mapping the genetic code of a parasite known as Theileria parva. This single-celled parasite is transmitted to cattle by biting ticks and causes East Coast fever, which kills a million cattle a year in 11 countries of Africa and is responsible for up to half of all deaths of calves kept by pastoralists there. Much of the work that contributed to this world-class scientific breakthrough, published in the prestigious journal Science, was undertaken in Africa by scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, in partnership with scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), based in the Maryland, USA.

Working with ILRI, scientists at TIGR first sequenced the genome of the T. parva parasite. Most of the subsequent work in annotating the sequence by identifying genes and assigning gene functions was performed by two bioinformatics specialists at ILRI— South African Etienne de Villiers and Kenyan Trushar Shah—using ILRI’s new high-performance computing facility at its Nairobi laboratories.

de Villiers, Shah and colleagues are hoping to build on this breakthrough to strengthen bioinformatics capacity in Africa. They are forming partnerships with leading universities worldwide with the aim of offering post- and under-graduate training in bioinformatics in and for Africa until African universities begin offering masters and doctoral degrees in this new discipline.

Genomics is the molecular characterization of all the genes in a species. It is concerned with sequencing and mapping all of the genes—together known as the genome—that make up a given species, and from this information, establishing what makes the species and the individuals within the species unique. Those working in genomics are interested to discover, for example, how genetic make up is responsible for making some species and individuals susceptible to disease while otheres tolerate or resist the same disease. The prospect of discovering such important biological factors makes genomics one of the most exciting fields in science today. Developments are rapid and new insights are being gained daily.

Bioinformatics is a combination of computer, information and biological sciences. Bioinformatics takes advantage of new computing and information technologies and exploits these to help scientists answer complex biological questions. Specialist databases and tools are used to manage the huge amounts of complex biological data being generated by genomics.

 High-performance computing in and for Africa
The high-performance computing facility on ILRI’s campus in Nairobi provides local scientists with access to state-of-the-art technologies to enable them to conduct extensive and large-scale genomics research fast and cost-effectively for the first time. The facility has been established in Nairobi to serve the bioinformatics needs of ILRI and the eastern and central African scientific community. It is being managed as a shared facility by a new regional science platform called ‘Biosciences eastern and central Africa’ (BecA), whose hub is at ILRI’s Nairobi laboratories.

Etienne de Villiers explains that, ‘Exploitation of the latest genome technologies requires scientists skilled in bioinformatics and with access to high-performance computing infrastructure. The strategy behind high-performance computing is “divide and conquer”. Dividing a complex problem into smaller component tasks, that can be worked on simultaneously by computer, saves time, physical and human resources and money.

‘Bioinformatics is a relatively new specialist area. We need to raise awareness of the field here in Africa and expose people to its potential. The West has spent millions of dollars sequencing the genomes of humans, animals, plants and parasites and the resulting data are freely available on the internet. This is a vast body of knowledge that local scientists can use to solve their specific problems or to answer research questions. All scientists in Africa need to make use of these data are a computer, good internet access and bioinformatics skills.’

Raising awareness and building capacity in Africa
ILRI/BecA training courses and research projects are already taking advantage of the high-performance computing facility, which was commissioned in January 2005. In association with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the Linnaeus Centre for Bioinformatics, in Uppsala, Sweden, ILRI and BecA recently ran a three-day training workshop that introduced 30 scientists and students from eastern and central Africa to the field of bioinformatics.

BecA scientist Trushar Shah says that ‘bioinformatics is a new and dynamic field that young African scientists should be getting involved in, whether as a specialist or a user exploiting the technology to help answer a complex research question. Our recent short training course was very successful and we are organizing a further course in April 2007.’

 

African bioinformatics skills and expertise

Participants at the Bioinformatics introductory course, August 2006
 

Home grown strategies and interim partnerships
de Villiers is an advocate of home-grown strategies that take into consideration local needs to build capacity in Africa. ‘One of our primary goals is to grow the number and competence of bioinformatics developers and users in the east and central Africa region. To do that, we have to be responsive to local needs. We are raising awareness of the importance and utility of bioinformatics, providing introductory training for early-career scientists, and giving skilled bioinformaticians in the region ready access to advanced tools, support and expertise. We are also considering the longer term and how best we can contribute to building bioinformatics skills and expertise throughout Africa.

‘Local universities are working hard to build capacity but at the moment are unable to award degrees in bioinformatics. Our thrust now is to explore partnerships with leading bioinformatics institutes to enable us to make undergraduate and postgraduate training possible. We are working to link up with universities with well-established training programs in bioinformatics to offer East and Central African students masters and doctoral degree training in bioinformatics, possibly through distance learning.
 
‘We are also planning to link up with universities and institutes that can host these students for a few months so they can gain practical experience in the applications of bioinformatics. This way we are also training future local trainers.’

de Villiers was recently made Extraordinary Lecturer at the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Unit of Pretoria University, in South Africa. This appointment enables him to supervise students from eastern and central Africa who are affiliated with the high-performance computing facility and wish to pursue higher degrees in bioinformatics through Pretoria University.

World’s most diverse forage collection comes under new treaty

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On Monday 16 October 2006, world leaders in agricultural research signed agreements that guarantee long-term access to some of the world's most important collections of agricultural biodiversity.

In a ceremony that took place on World Food Day, 11 centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) placed all their ex-situ genebank collections under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, now ratified by 105 countries.

A livestock forage genebank maintained by one of these CGIAR centres, the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), conserves more than 18 thousand accessions of forages from over 1000 species. This is one of the most diverse collections of forage grasses, legumes and fodder tree species held in any genebank in the world and includes the world’s major collection of African grasses and tropical highland forages. In 1994, the germplasm collection held by ILRI was placed in trust under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as part of their international network of ex situ collections. Now, 12 years later, this trust collection comes under the purview of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture following the 16 October 2006 landmark agreement between CGIAR Centers and the governing body of the treaty.

As part of its commitment to maintaining the collection as a global public good, ILRI claims no ownership nor seeks any intellectual property rights over the germplasm and related information. Rather, ILRI conserves its diverse forage collection to make it and relevant information freely available to scientists and the national agricultural research systems of developing and other countries.

ILRI maintains both an active and base genebank at its site in Addis Ababa.

Active and base genebanks

The active genebank is used for current research and distribution of seeds. Seeds are dried in a dehumidified drying room and packed in laminated aluminium foil bags for storage in the active genebank at 8°C. All seeds in the active collection are freely available in small quantities to bona-fide forage research workers and distributed both directly and through networks.

The base genebank is used for long-term security storage of original germplasm collections. The base genebank acts as a repository of materials that have been reasonably characterized and which may or may not have current interest or use by plant breeders. Collected materials are preserved until such time as there are enough resources available for them to be characterized and evaluated. Materials are stored in the base genebank at -20°C.

Forage diversity activities at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)

Forage diversity as a global public good

ILRI and the other centres of the CGIAR hold more than 600,000 samples of crop-plant diversity. This includes wild relatives and more than half of the global total of farmer-created varieties, which are such a rich source of sought-after characteristics, for example to meet the challenge of climate change.
‘This really is an investment in food security,’ said Emile Frison, Director General of International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), which is responsible for the world’s banana collection. ‘The genetic diversity created in the past by farmers and researchers is the foundation of improvements to meet the challenges of the future.”’

’Unless we can meet those challenges,’ Frison added, ‘there will be no food security.’
Mahmoud Solh, Director General of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), said that the new agreements would ‘allow breeders and other researchers to tap the collections for solutions to the most pressing problems, such as drought, desertification, and food and nutritional security.’

Centre directors ‘warmly welcome’ the agreements and ‘commit themselves to supporting and implementing the Treaty’. A statement issued by the Alliance of CGIAR Centres sets out the centres’ common understanding of certain provisions of the agreements and indicates some actions that the centres will be taking to implement them.

Click here to view the statement of the CGIAR centres regarding implementation of the agreements between the centres and the governing body of the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.
 

Innovative and collaborative veterinary organizations make vaccine available to Kenyan livestock keepers

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A group of determined Kenyan livestock keepers set in motion an innovative collaboration that has benefited cattle-keeping communities throughout Kenya
 
Starting in 2000, word started getting out among Kenyan pastoralists that a vaccine being administered in Tanzania was succeeding in protecting cattle against East Coast fever. Kenya at that time did not condone use of this vaccine due to perceived safety and other issues, and so Kenya ’s livestock keepers could not get hold of it. In response, they began to walk their calves across the Kenya border into Tanzania to get them vaccinated.

‘East Coast fever is responsible on average for half of the calf mortality in pastoral production systems in eastern Africa . This vaccine represented a much needed lifeline for many pastoralists, and livestock keepers in Kenya wanted access to it,’ Evans Taracha, head of animal health at at ILRI explained.

‘ILRI faced a dilemma. We had produced a vaccine right here in Nairobi, at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), that could protect pastoral and other cattle against East Coast fever, but, due to government regulations, our beneficiaries could not get access to it in Kenya.’

Kenya’s livestock keepers then started lobbying national authorities and called upon Vétérinaires sans Frontières (VSF)-Germany, an international veterinary NGO based in East Africa , to help them. Thus began a highly successful multi-partner collaboration.

Besides VSF-Germany, the collaboration includes ILRI, the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the African Union-InterAfrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU/IBAR), the Director of Veterinary Services (DVS), the NGO VetAgro, and the community-based Loita Development Foundation.

Gabriel Turasha, field veterinary coordinator for VSF-G said, ‘The demand for this vaccine was evident from the farmers’ actions. What we needed to prove – to the authorities restricting its use – was that the vaccine was safe, effective and a superior alternative to the East Coast fever control strategy already being used in Kenya .’

Armed with scientific evidence, the collaboration successfully lobbied the Kenyan government and then facilitated local production and local access to the vaccine. Three vaccine distribution centres have been established in Kenya and more than 10,000 calves vaccinated.

John McDermott, ILRI’s deputy director general of research, said, ‘This collaboration illustrates how the research from “discovery to delivery” can be facilitated by collaboration between research institutes, which are in the business of doing science, and development partners, which are in the business of on-the-ground delivery. This has been a great success story—and a great win for Kenya ’s pastoralists.’

This innovative collaboration has been selected as a finalist in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) ‘Innovation Marketplace Awards’. These awards recognize outstanding collaborative efforts among CGIAR-supported centres and civil society organizations. Four winners will be announced at the CGIAR’s Annual General Meeting, to be held in Washington, DC , in December 2006.

Carlos Seré, director general of ILRI, said, ‘We are delighted to learn that this partnership has received recognition. ILRI is involved in a host of innovative collaborations and continues to seek new partners—from civil society organizations to the private sector to local research institutions—to help us deliver on our promises to poor livestock keepers in developing countries.’

ollaborative Team Brings Vaccine against Deadly Cattle Disease to Poor Pastrolists for the First Time

Related Articles on Innovation Collaborations
ILRI recently collaborated with VSF-Belgium, VSF-Switzerland and two Italian NGOs in an Emergency Drought Response Program in Kenya.

VSF, ILRI, Italian NGOs, and Kenya Collaborate to Mitigate the Effects of Drought in Northern Kenya

The ILRI collaborative effort described in this Top Story was featured in the Journal of International Development (July 2005) as an example of a ‘potentially new model of research and development partnership’ with a more ‘complete’ approach to innovation.

 

Further Information
VSF-Germany is a nongovernmental, not-for-profit organization engaged in veterinary relief and development work. VSF-Germany's primary role involves the control and prevention of epidemics; the establishment of basic veterinarian services and para-veterinarian programs with high involvement of local people; the improvement of animal health, especially among agriculturally useful animals; food security through increases in the production of animal-based food and non-food products; and the reduction of animal diseases that are transferable to humans. VSF-Germany carries out emergency as well as development operations. The organization's area of operation is East Africa.

Website: http://www.vsfg.org/eng.php