Category Archives: Africa

Options to enhance resilience in pastoral systems: The case for novel livestock insurance

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ILRI director for institutional planning Shirley Tarawali

ILRI director for institutional planning Shirley Tarawali (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Shirley Tarawali, director for institutional planning at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), gave a slide presentation today (22 Feb 2012) titled ‘Options for enhancing resilience in pastoral systems: The case for novel livestock insurance’, at a Brussels Briefing onNew challenges and opportunities for pastoralism in ACP [Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific] countries.

Rangelands, Tarawali told the participants at this policy briefing, have fewer than 20 persons per sq km and a growing period of less than 60 days/annum, making crop production impossible. Constituting the largest land-use system globally, rangelands cover some 35 million sq km and support almost 50% of the world’s livestock. The 200 million pastoralists who live on rangelands are the environmental stewards of these vast resources, but many of them are among the world’s poorest, Tarawali reported, living on less than $2 a day. Subject to the vagaries of climate variability, food insecurity, poor markets and infrastructure, animal diseases, under-investment and conflicts over natural resources, pastoralists are among the world’s most vulnerable peoples.

A key development challenge, Tarawali said, is how to help pastoral communities increase their adaptive capacity and resilience in the face of shocks, such as the food crisis that followed a great drought in the Horn of Africa last year. At the risk of over-simplifying matters, she said, two main strategies can improve pastoral resilience: (1) help herders better secure the assets on which they depend—their animals and other natural resources (land, water, biodiversity), and (2) help them diversify their income sources, whether through better livestock marketing, sales of other rangeland products, or schemes that pay pastoral herders for ecosystem services and environmental stewardship.

Blind man awaits payout

A blind man awaits his pay out by a livestock insurance scheme being trialled in Marsabit, northern Kenya (photo by Jeff Haskins on Flickr).

Empirical studies of almost 1,000 families in the Marsabit region of northern Kenya, Tarawali said, show that pastoralists rely on their animals for at least 40% of their income, with loss of animals to drought being a major reason that pastoralists fall into poverty. ILRI and partners have tested an innovative insurance scheme designed to protect pastoralists against drought-related livestock deaths. Based on satellite data that determines vegetative cover, and thus forage availability, this insurance makes pay outs when the level of forage scarcity is predicted to cause a certain percentage of livestock deaths in an area. The scheme, which involves commercial insurance companies, has been piloted in northern Kenya since January 2010.

The pilot shows that it’s feasible to design index-based livestock insurance contracts attractive to both pastoralists and commercial institutions. To date, more than 3,000 pastoralists have participated in this novel insurance scheme, and more than 600 of them received indemnity payments in October 2011, following the drought in the Horn that year. Creative education tools have played an important role in helping these never-before-insured pastoral communities to grasp how the insurance works.

Taking the pilot scheme to scale, Tarawali said, will require making the scheme more cost-effective (perhaps through use of ICTs both to collect premiums and to make indemnity payments) and better aligning the different incentives of the partners, with the private (insurance) companies stressing copyright and profit and the public institutions (such as ILRI) aiming to enhance pastoral livelihoods.

Despite these challenges, she reported that this insurance tool has potential to help development agencies and governments shift their focus from making the right responses to droughts when droughts occur to investing in pastoral development on an on-going basis, with livestock insurance acting as a social safety net, securing the productive assets of these vulnerable populations in times of hardship. And she reminded her audience that most countries make significant public investments in agricultural insurance programs (US farmers pay only 40% of the actuarially fair premium and index-linked insurance in India is subsidized by some 50%). The index-based livestock insurance schemes now being piloted in Kenya and about to start in Ethiopia include rigorous evaluations of their impacts on pastoral welfare, which should help governments to efficiently target public investments in livestock insurance.

With this demonstration that index-based livestock insurance mitigates both pastoral vulnerability to drought and ad hoc coping strategies, Tarawali argued, it’s an appropriate time to consider redeploying some of the significant public funds spent in responding to droughts in insurance subsidy programs that keep insurance premiums affordable by poor pastoralists.

View the slide presentation: Options for enhancing resilience in pastoral systems:

 

 

For more information, visit the websites of the Index-based Livestock Insurance Project, www.ilri.org/ibli  and ILRI, www.ilri.org

New reports explore reliability of climate models at predicting impacts on agriculture

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Washing harvested potatoes in a village in central Malawi

A farmer washing newly-harvested potatoes in Malawi. New studies in Africa and Asia offer insights into the reliablity of climate projections for agriculture (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Findings from a series of studies that assessed the reliability of climate models in predicting the impact of climate change on agriculture were released today.

The reports, which are based on studies that tested General Circulation Models in West Africa, East Africa and the Indo-Gangetic plains were produced by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) research program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and Oxford University. The studies reviewed impacts of different climate change scenarios on crop farming in these regions.

The reports show that though individual models have a number of severe weaknesses in predicting agricultural impacts of climate change, they can be used together to produce useful climate change projections. The reports give details on the specific strengths and weaknesses of each of the models used and how they can be used together to predict possible shifts in farming practices.

‘Ensemble model predictions can overcome many of the individual model weaknesses to help decision makers plan future agricultural activities,’ said Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), who coordinated the research for the CGIAR Climate Change program. ‘This information can guide investments in risk management, adaptation and mitigation research, as well as infrastructural development.  These actions are crucial if agriculture is to adapt to a changing climate.’

Read full story on the CCAFS news blog: http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog

 

Frontline livestock disease research in, and for, Africa highlighted in White House conversation today

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Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are working with many partners to improve control of major diseases of cattle in Africa.

East Coast fever in African cattle, one of the target diseases of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is included in a message today at the White House delivered by Raj Shah, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. Shah will remind his audience that East Coast fever kills one cow every 30 seconds in Africa. Watch the live stream and join the conversation at 11am ET at the White House today, when Shah and others will answer questions about Innovations for Global Development.

Two other target diseases of ILRI’s are contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and trypanosomosis. All three diseases affect millions of the world’s poorest farmers. And all remain underfunded because they occur mostly in developing regions of the world.

ILRI recently produced three short films on research battles against these diseases.

CBPP: A new vaccine project starts
Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (known by its acronym, CBPP) is found throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, where it causes most harm in pastoralist areas. The disease kills up to 15% of infected animals, reduces the meat and milk yields of infected cows (milk yields drop by up to 90%), and reduces the ability of infected oxen to pull ploughs and do other kinds of farm work. An existing ‘live’ vaccine against this disease produces severe side effects and gives only limited protection.

Watch this short (runtime: 2:35) ILRI film, ‘Developing a Vaccine for a Highly Contagious Cattle Disease’, on the research recently begun at ILRI and its partner institutes, including the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, to develop a more effective vaccine against this form of acute cattle pneumonia. This research is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Trypanosomosis: A genetic approach to its control
Trypanosomosis, called sleeping sickness in humans, is a wasting disease that maims and eventually kills millions of cattle in Africa and costs farmers billions of dollars annually.

In 2011, using the latest gene mapping and genomic technologies, researchers at ILRI’s Nairobi, Kenya, animal health laboratories and at institutes in the UK and Ireland identified two genes that enable Africa’s ancient N’Dama cattle breed to resist development of the disease when infected with the causative, trypanosome, parasite.

This breakthrough should eventually make it easier for Africa’s livestock breeders to breed animals that will remain healthy and productive in areas infested by the parasite-carrying tsetse fly. The international team that came together in this project is an example of the disciplinary breadth and agility needed to do frontline biology today, and the complex research approaches and technologies now needed to unravel fundamental biological issues so as to benefit world’s poor.

ILRI’s collaborating institutes in this work include Liverpool University; the Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh; Trinity College, Dublin; and the University of Manchester. The Wellcome Trust funded the bulk of the work in this project.

Watch this short (runtime: 5:28) ILRI film, ‘Battling a Killer Cattle Disease’, on the international partnership that made this breakthrough in trypanosomosis research.

 

Trypanosomosis: A community-based approach to its control
Another ILRI research team has been working with partners and livestock keepers in West Africa to develop safer ways to treat their cattle with drugs to protect them from trypanosomosis. Parasite resistance to the trypanocidal drugs used to treat and prevent this disease has emerged in many areas and is a growing problem for farmers and governments alike. This collaborative research team recently developed good practices in the use of trypanocides to slow the emergence of drug resistance in the parasites that cause the disease. This film describes the disease and these practices, known as ‘rational drug use’, clearly and in detail to help veterinary workers and farmers treat animals safely.

ILRI’s partners in this project include the Centre International de Recherche-Développement sur l’Elevage en Zone Subhumid, Freie Universität Berlin, Laboratoire Vétérinaire Centrale du Mali, Centre Régional de la Recherche Agricole Sikasso, Project de Lutte contra la Mouche Tsétsé et la Trypanosomose (Mali), Pan-African Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Campaign (Mali), University of Hannover, Direction Nationale de l’Elevage et l’Institut de Recherche Agronomique de Guinée, Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Control Unit (Ghana), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique du Bénin and the Nigerian Institute of Trypanosomiasis Research. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Watch this ILRI film, ‘Community-Based Integrated Control of Trypanosomosis in Cattle’ (runtime: 12.48), for clear instructions on how to deploy drugs to better control trypanosomosis over the long term.

Funders meet in Nairobi to align their vision and expectations for pro-poor biosciences research

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Last week (13 Dec 2011), aid agencies that have funded Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub (BecA Hub), a shared state-of-the-art research and capacity building platform hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for the region, convened an all-day meeting at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters. The purpose of the meeting was to harmonize support being provided to BecA and African biosciences and to explore sustainable models for building on the momentum that BecA and its supporters have created.

BecA’s main donors and stakeholders represented at this meeting were the:

  • Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID)
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)
  • Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA, which funded BecA in its beginnings)
  • New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)
  • Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

This donor alignment meeting came appropriately on the heels of a recent first meeting of the CEOs of both NEPAD, a program of the Africa Union celebrating its tenth anniversary, and ILRI, one of 16 centres belonging to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), now celebrating 40 years of operation.

NEPAD’s Luke Mumba, who participated in the meeting, brought warm greetings from his CEO, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who had paid a recent first visit to ILRI and BecA and reported that NEPAD views BecA ‘as strategically important for affordable and accessible biosciences.’

‘BecA and NEPAD have a common vision to improve livelihoods of the poor,’ Mayaki said. ‘And NEPAD is now interested to play a bigger role in BecA’s programs, helping it to have even greater impact.’

ILRI director general Jimmy Smith thanked Mumba for his message and then framed the ensuing discussion in a talk and slide presentation. The following are excerpts from his talk.

Opening remarks by ILRI’s Jimmy Smith
‘The idea for a Biosciences eastern and Central Africa platform started when I worked for CIDA. It is an initiative I’ve supported since its inception. And I’ve been thinking about BecA since before I rejoined ILRI this November.

‘I liked BecA’s business plan but thought it lacked the “demand side”. I discussed this with Syngenta’s Marco Ferroni, and told him that it’s possible that different donors have different expectations of BecA. I want these to be aligned so that I can fulfill on them.

‘I’d like to frame our discussions today by providing first a bit of context.

Up until 2008 we all believed that food came from supermarkets. Then the world food market went topsy turvy. Prices rose and 100 million people were sent into poverty. Because prices for food were good for some poor farmers, 40 million people also rose out of poverty.

‘Since then, people are once again raising the old Malthusian theory—that massive geometric population growth in the face of arithmetic food growth is bound to lead to great social upheavals.

Here’s what we’re facing. There’ll be 2.5 billion more people by mid-century. We’ll need 70% more food produced to feed the additional population. Specifically, for example, we’ll need 1 billion more tonnes of cereal grains by 2050 for food, feed and biofuels. Most of the additional food will have to come from land already farmed.

‘And we are not starting from zero. There are already 1 billion people in the world who are hungry!

‘75% of people who are poor live in rural areas, but they are at the receiving end of investments of only 4% of official development assistance for agriculture.

‘Donor support to agriculture has fallen from 1980 to 2009. The trendline is inching upwards, but very slowly—and it is not matching the need.

‘In Africa, food production has been increasing but it still lags behind population growth. Africa has been meeting its food needs largely from importation, US$14-billion-worth of cereals each year. This is not sustainable. The continent cannot continue to spend so much on food if it is also going to invest sufficiently in other sectors, such as health and education.

‘The Ford and Rockefeller foundations together financed research that led to the ‘Green Revolution’. This was a group of donors, around a table, with a big vision, which was transformative. My question is, will the creation of BecA be as transformative as that of the Ford and Rockefeller vision was in the sixties? I think it could be.

What are the opportunities for BecA?
‘Every expert who has studied the food situation has said our best possibilities lie in the biotech sciences. People see biotech as a new frontier that has helped us in the past and can continue to do so in the future. We can now do things faster and with more precision. Look how quickly genomes can now be mapped.

This opportunity could be seized and be transformative again. Think if we could produce maize as efficiently as sorghum. What would happen to the maize belt in Africa? Can we create plants whose photosynthesis is more efficient? Can the native African Boran cow produce as much milk as the exotic Jersey?

‘The facility to conduct such science is brought to Africa through the BecA Hub at a scale that could have great impact. It is also here at a size that can greatly help build biosciences capacity on the continent. BecA Hub capacity can leverage the expertise of ILRI and the other centres of the CGIAR. It can catalyze and add value to the agenda of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.

‘Challenges and questions remain. Can we, for example, develop an explicit agenda setting process that CAADP members will own and invest in? Can we transform our funding base to do transformative science working with CADPP, NARS, universities? Can we put in place an accountability framework that inspires confidence in our donors and partners? Can we bring about more harmonious relationships internally?’

View the slide presentation Jimmy Smith made: The BecA-ILRI Hub: Realizing the promise, 13 Dec 2011.

View a presentation ‘BecA hub research, facilities, and capacity building‘ by Jagger Harvey, Appolinaire Djikeng, and Rob Skilton

 

New study says livestock production provides Kenya with 43% of agricultural GDP

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Collecting milk in Kenya's informal market

Collecting milk in Kenya’s informal market (photo credit: ILRI/Dave Elsworth).

Do estimates of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) of African nations really underestimate the value of the contribution from the livestock sector, as livestock specialists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and elsewhere frequently complain? In Kenya and Ethiopia, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

A new study by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Livestock Policy Initiative (LPI), which worked with national partners, concludes that livestock’s contribution to Kenya’s agricultural GDP is a whopping two and a half times larger than the official estimate for 2009. An earlier IGAD study concluded that livestock’s contribution to Ethiopia’s agricultural GDP has been even more dramatically under-reported; livestock’s contribution is now being estimated at three and a half times larger than that of the last official estimate available.

In Kenya, ‘This increase of 150% over official estimates means that the livestock contribution to agricultural GDP is only slightly less than that from arable agriculture, i.e. 320 billion Kenyan shillings for livestock (about $4.21 billion US dollars in 2009) versus 399 billion Kenyan shillings for crops and horticulture (in 2009 roughly $5.25 billion US dollars). . . .

‘According to the revised estimates, milk is Kenya’s most economically important livestock product, providing a little less than three quarters of the total gross value of livestock’s contribution to the agricultural sector. In terms of its contribution to agricultural GDP, milk is about four times more important than meat.

‘Cattle are Kenya’s most important source of red meat, supplying by value about 80% of the nation’s ruminant offtake for slaughter. More than 80% of the beef consumed in Kenya is produced by pastoralists, either domestically or in neighbouring countries and then imported on the hoof, often unofficially.’

In addition, the broad range of benefits rural food producers derive from livestock keeping—including manure for fertilizing crop field, traction for pulling ploughs, and serving as a means of savings and credit and insurance—represent about 11% of the value of the livestock contribution to GDP in Kenya and more than 50% in Ethiopia.

‘The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that Kenya’s livestock are economically much more important than hitherto believed; in fact, only marginally less than crops and horticulture combined. Agriculture and forestry are by far Kenya’s most important economic sector in terms of domestic production and it would now appear that livestock provide about 43% of the output from this sector. . . .’

We link here to the whole policy brief from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Livestock Policy Initiative (LPI – IGAD LPI website). The brief was based on working paper by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and IGAD: The Contribution of Livestock to the Kenyan Economy, No. 03-2011, by Roy Behnke and David Muthami.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the earlier IGAD LPI working papers on Ethiopia (also a policy brief).

American agricultural economist Tom Randolph to lead new CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish

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ILRI's Tom Randolph

Tom Randolph, an agricultural economist at ILRI, speaks with former ILRI project manager Oumar Diall while attending a 2006 workshop in Bamako, Mali, on controlling trypanosomosis drug resistance, a project he and Diall led for several years in West Africa (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

Tom Randolph has been named director of a newly established CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish. Jimmy Smith, new director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a position he took up on 1 October 2011, announced Randolph’s appointment on 13 October 2011.

ILRI leads this CGIAR research program, which is one of several new multi-institutional research programs initiated by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). In this program, which aims to provide more meat, milk and fish by and for the poor, ILRI will be collaborating with other scientists and staff from three of its sister CGIAR centres—the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia; the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), based in Aleppo, Syria; and the WorldFish Center, based in Penang, Malaysia. Many other strategic partners will play key roles in implementing the program in several ‘livestock value chains’ and countries targeted by the new project.

Randolph helped lead the collaborative processes employed over the last two years to develop the concept and subsequent full proposal for this research program.

Before this appointment, Randolph headed a team conducting research on smallholder competitiveness in changing markets under ILRI’s Market Opportunities Theme. His research interests and contributions at ILRI have been varied, including studies at the interface of animal and human health and assessments of the impacts of agricultural problems and the research conducted to address them, including evaluations of the impacts of tick and tick-borne diseases, animal health delivery systems, ILRI’s East Coast fever vaccine development research, the contributions economics and epidemiology can make to animal disease control and the control of bird flu in sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the projects Randolph led has helped to reduce parasite resistance to drugs used to control trypanosomosis (animal sleeping sickness) in the cotton belt of West Africa. This project established a clear picture of the distribution of potential resistance across a zone from eastern Guinea to western Burkina Faso, highlighting the importance of tsetse ecology, farming systems, accessibility to veterinary services and pharmaceutical products, and cattle breed in influencing drug use and misuse. Under Randolph’s leadership, this project evolved from a primary focus on the biological issue to a holistic understanding of the complex epidemiological and socioeconomic factors at farm, local, national and regional levels that influence the problem and determine the ability to address it.

Among his more recent projects is a groundbreaking assessment of the relations between dairy intensification, gender and child nutrition among smallholder farmers in the Rift Valley Province of Kenya; this project is investigating the pathways between dairy intensification and child nutrition.

An American from upstate New York, Randolph received an undergraduate degree in Chinese studies in 1976, after which he spent six years teaching English in Zaire with the Peace Corps. On his return to the United States, Randolph pursued an MSc and PhD in agricultural economics from Cornell University. His doctoral dissertation was based on field work he conducted in Malawi with the Harvard Institute for International Development, looking at the impact of agricultural commercialization on child nutrition in smallholder households. His thesis earned the American Agricultural Economics Association’s Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award. He subsequently joined the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA, now Africa Rice Centre), in Senegal, as a Rockefeller-funded post-doctoral fellow, later becoming policy economist and policy support program leader at WARDA’s Côte d’Ivoire headquarters.

Randolph joined ILRI in 1998 and will remain based at ILRI’s Nairobi, Kenya, headquarters as he directs this new multi-country and multi-institutional CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish.

Catalogue of 100 livestock-for-development films now online

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ILRI Film Page on the Web

A screenshot of a film from the catalogue of over 100 livestock-for-development films that are now online (photo credit: ILRI).

An updated catalogue of high-quality livestock-for-development films is now available for downloading. This catalogue features over 100 short videos and several 15-to-20-minute documentaries produced by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) since 2006.

The 2011 collection includes features about the launch of one of the most advanced biosciences research facilities in sub-Saharan Africa, in Nairobi Kenya, where dozens of young scientists are researching ways of fighting hunger, and a new 5-year competitive grants program for researchers interested in biological innovations for food security. This year’s catalogue also includes videos on a workshop ambitious to scale up ways of empowering women farmers in Africa and Asia and films about how scientists are working to better control a wasting cattle disease that afflicts African livestock known as trypanosomosis.

Older films cover the development, in Kenya, of the first livestock insurance for African pastoralists, an award-winning film on balancing the needs of people, lands and wildlife in the Masai Mara, and interviews with scientists who are working to improve farmers’ capacity to cope with climate change in poor countries.

The catalogue lists all ILRI films and gives simple instructions on viewing them online or downloading them to your computer.

Download the ILRI film catalogue for more information

More on ILRI livestock scientists among top African women awardees: Panel remarks by Lillian Wambua

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Announcement of AWARD Fellowship winners of 2011: Nairobi

Lillian Wambua (second right), a researcher in ILRI’s Biotechnology Theme and one of the 2011 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship winners, among panelists at the 2011 AWARD fellowship announcement (photo credit: ILRI/Njiru).

Following are remarks made by ILRI researcher Lillian Wambua during the announcement of the 2011 fellowships of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) winners held on Thursday 18 August at Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi

‘As a little girl, growing up in the arid Makueni District of Kenya’s Eastern Province, my family’s few goats, chicken and humped zebu cattle were the most important assets we had. The sandy and stony land although vast, was largely unproductive. Unable to count on growing food crops, our livestock were the key to our livelihood. The same holds true for rural populations across much of the African continent. Livestock are essential to their wellbeing.’

‘My work as a young scientist is particularly important when you consider the challenges we are facing with climate change and the current drought and the famine in our region. The drought has been particularly devastating for livestock keepers. At the same time, we are dealing with a mounting list of challenges. The world is getting warmer. We are seeing more sudden floods and more prolonged droughts. These changing weather patterns affect the distribution and prevalence of livestock diseases.’

‘During my studies, I realized that DNA technology held the key to future discoveries that would tackle many problems, including livestock diseases. During my first degree, I had the opportunity to work at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) here in Nairobi.’

‘It was here that I knew I was on the right path.’

‘Now every day, my work is finding lasting solutions to secure healthy herds of livestock for rural populations. We are tapping into genetic diversity so these animals can adapt to changing environments and disease pressure and live long and strong to benefit farmers.’

‘In particular, I hope to help women farmers, as they and their children are the majority of the agriculture work force. I want to empower them so they can step up their agriculture activities and improve their own livelihoods.’

‘As a post doctoral fellow, in the early stages of an independent research career, I am truly looking forward to the opportunities that he African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) will open up for me. I am looking forward to the visibility the fellowship might enable me to have and am excited about the potential to form strategic and lasting partnerships in my work. I see this as the start of a very exciting two-year period that has the potential to catapult my career.’

‘I look forward to the leadership skills I will acquire, to be a research leader and trend setter in my field.’

‘In this world you cannot accomplish great things alone. We need to collaborate. We need partnerships. I look forward to learning from my AWARD mentor and the other strong, intelligent and dedicated women scientists that I will have the opportunity to connect with through the AWARD program.

‘I have worked hard to get to this place, and know my work is just beginning. I am thankful for this opportunity offered by this program and look forward to each exciting day ahead in the process of finding solutions for our rural farmers.’

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For more information on the ILRI’s 2011 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship winners and the projects they work in, visit the ILRI biotechnology theme blog: http://biolives.wordpress.com/

ILRI livestock scientists among top African Women awardees: Racheal Aye

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Racheal Aye, ILRI PhD studentTogether with Lillian Wambua and Nimmo Gacheru, Racheal Aye (pictured) was one of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) scientists among 70 African women agricultural researchers selected for the 2011 fellowships of the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD), which were announced on Thursday 18 August at Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi. AWARD is an initiative of the Gender and Diversity program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Aye, from ILRI’s Biotechnology Theme – all of this year’s ILRI AWARD fellows work in the theme – is a PhD student with the contagious bovine pleuropneumonia project. Her interest in the economic effects and public health impacts of trans-boundary animal diseases has focused her research on the effects of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, a highly infectious livestock disease that is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa and leads to reduced animal productivity causing social economic losses for many of the continents livestock farmers.

‘I hope to understand better the causes of this disease and eventually contribute solutions to help resource-poor livestock keepers who are dealing with its effects,’ said Aye, who also works as a teaching assistant at Uganda’s Gulu University. ‘As a result of my work in this project, I hope to develop an illustrated immunology book of tropical diseases for use by young scientists who are studying immunology at my university and also in the east African region.’

Aye says the AWARD fellowship will widen her network and experiences and she plans to use findings from her research in her teaching at Gulu University so those she trains can share this knowledge with rural smallholder farmers. ‘I will also organize workshops in my district with the Ugandan National Agricultural Advisory Services to empower grassroots trainers so they can pass on the knowledge on animal disease control to the rest of the community.’

Through the networks and trainings from the fellowship, Aye hopes to learn new techniques and gain more skills in genetic modifications, vaccinology, diagnostics and genetic enhancement of animal breeding and how these can be used to boost food security and to pave a way out of poverty for livestock keepers in Africa.

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For more information on the ILRI’s 2011 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship winners and the projects they work in, visit the ILRI biotechnology theme blog: http://biolives.wordpress.com/

ILRI livestock scientists among top African women awardees

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Announcement of AWARD Fellowship winners of 2011: Nairobi

Lillian Wambua, a researcher in ILRI’s Biotechnology Theme, is one of the 2011 African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) fellowship winners (photo credit: ILRI/Njiru).

The contribution of African women agricultural researchers and smallholder farmers to agricultural research and food production in the continent was last week highlighted and recognized during the announcement of the 2011 fellowships of the 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).

Seventy women agricultural scientists – including food and veterinary scientists and agricultural economists – from 11 countries across Africa will benefit from this year’s fellowships.  Among the winners of this year’s fellowships, which were announced at Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi on Thursday 18 August, are two scientists affiliated with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Lillian Wambua and Nimmo Gicheru, who are researching some of the continent’s most pressing livestock disease problems.

Wambua, from the University of Nairobi, is a researcher in ILRI’s Biotechnology Theme, where she is investigating the impacts of bovine malignant catarrhal fever, a fatal livestock disease that is spread from wildebeest to cattle and harms the livelihoods of Maasai pastoralists in southern Kenya. ‘Livestock keepers need support to deal with these diseases,’ says Wambua. ‘I hope to help, particularly, women farmers to improve their productivity as they are the stronghold of the agricultural workforce in much of Africa. I believe this fellowship will raise my visibility and give me new skills to be a research leader in the process.’

Announcement of AWARD Fellowship winners of 2011: Nairobi

ILRI’s Nimmo Gicheru, in light blue shirt, also received the 2011 AWARD fellowship (photo credit: ILRI/Njiru).

Nimmo Gicheru, who is currently pursuing her PhD studies, has a background in medical research and is part of an ILRI project working to enhance control of contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, a highly infectious livestock disease that occurs throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa. The project, which began in May 2011, seeks to develop diagnostic tools and vaccines to better manage the disease. ‘It’s a great honour to be selected as an AWARD Fellow, says Gicheru. ‘This program is showing us how to use various tools and techniques not only to apply our research but also to negotiate and network with other scientists in the process of sharing our innovations and knowledge with farmers,’ she said. ‘AWARD is giving African women agricultural scientists a voice.’

Speaking during the event, Vicki Wilde, director of the AWARD program, noted the ‘growing recognition of the importance of investing in Africa’s women.’ The program, now in its fourth year, has awarded fellowships to 250 African women scientists ‘who are coming out with strengthened science skills, gender responsiveness in their work and an increase in confidence and willingness to lead,’ said Wilde. ‘These fellows can play an influential role in Africa’s agricultural development by supporting African farmers with knowledge and innovation to enable them to bounce back in the face of dynamic change.’

‘AWARD is a shinning example of the contribution that women can make to food security and agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa,’ said Kurt Low, office director for a Regional Economic Growth and Integration Program of United States Agency for International Development, which, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is a key sponsor of the program.

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For more information on the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development project and for a full list of the 2011 AWARD fellowship winners visit www.awardfellowships.org

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in Kenya, will visit ‘model research institution in Africa’–ILRI

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Biosciences eastern and central Africa hub platform

One of 7 high-tech laboratories at the Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub, a regional state-of-the-art science platform hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya (photo credit: ILRI/David White).

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has arrived in Kenya.

Her busy one-day visit to this country, the first of three countries she is visiting on her African tour, includes talks with Kenya President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

As reported in Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper on Sunday, Merkel will also hold a joint press conference with Prime Minister Odinga. At the press conference, to be held at the Intercontinental Hotel, in Nairobi’s city centre, Chancellor Merkel will sign a new agreement between her government and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which is headquartered in Kenya.

ILRI Director General Carlos Seré and Director for Partnerships and Communications Bruce Scott will attend the prime minister’s press conference and take part in the signing ceremony. Chancellor Merkel and ILRI’s Carlos Seré will then attend a State luncheon hosted by President Kibaki at State House.

After the luncheon, Chancellor Merkel is scheduled to give a speech at the University of Nairobi. She will then pay a visit to ILRI’s headquarters, in the suburb of  Kabete, where she will tour ILRI’s farm and labs, be introduced to some of the research partnerships her country is involved in, and give an address to the ILRI and diplomatic community.

The Daily Nation reports that some of Germany’s scientists are working at ILRI, which is ‘described as a model of a state-of-the-art research institution in Africa.’

President Kibaki is quite familiar himself with ILRI’s research. The president toured the laboratories at ILRI/BecA late last year (17 Nov 2010) when he officially launched the BecA Hub. And just last Friday (8 Jul 2011), the president paid a visit to an ILRI exhibit at the launch of his government’s ‘Open Data Web Portal,’ the first of its kind in Africa, at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre. At this launch, the president and several of his ministers as well as some 1,000 (techie) participants heard from ILRI scientist Andrew Mude, who presented to them a novel livestock insurance product that ILRI has initiated with private and public partners for poor livestock herders living in Kenya’s northern pastoral lands.

After her busy day today in Nairobi, Chancellor Merkel departs tonight (Tue 12 Jul 2011) for  Angola before going on to Nigeria.

This is a red-letter day for ILRI for another reason. ILRI Director General Carlos Seré, an agricultural economist from Uruguay, and his wife, Chrysille Seré, from Germany, will also be departing Kenya tonight, as it is the director general’s last official day in his Nairobi office. Carlos Seré has led ILRI for ten years, having started his tenure in January 2002. He is going on summer leave starting tonight. On 1 October of this year, Jimmy Smith, an animal scientist and policymaker from Guyana, now at the World Bank, will take over from Carlos Seré as director general of ILRI.

ILRI has had several informal goodbye parties for the Seré’s and will have one more opportunity to wish him well in the new position he is taking up in Rome at the International Fund for Agricultural Research (IFAD) at a 1.5-day ‘Seré Seminar’ that will take place this November in Addis Ababa to look back at Seré’s 10-year ILRI legacy and forward to new leadership under Smith.

ILRI staff are thus expressing to themselves how kind it is for Chancellor Merkel and President Kibaki to bid their director general farewell in suitable style at the State and ILRI functions today. :-)

Read the whole article in the Daily Nation: German leader jets in Tuesday, 10 Jul 2011.

Goat plague next target of veterinary authorities now that cattle plague has been eradicated

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Last known occurrences of rinderpest since 1995. IFPRI Discussion Paper 00923, November 2009, ‘The Global Effort to Eradicate Rinderpest’ by Peter Roeder and Karl Rich, 2020 Vision Initiative, a paper prepared for a project on Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development (www.ifpri.org/millionsfed) (illustration credit: FAO GREP).

Jeffrey Mariner, former advisor for special action areas to the Pan-African Rinderpest Campaign and current senior scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Kenya, is one of several authors of a paper published in the current issue of Veterinary Record on the subject of the rising importance of building a systematic program to eradicate a goat disease known as ‘peste des petits ruminants’ (PPR), or goat plague.

The editorial in the Veterinary Record explains why goat plague is replacing cattle plague among the world’s verterinary researchers.

‘This week saw a landmark in the history of the veterinary profession and, more specifically, its management of disease threats to food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) announced on June 28, 2011 that its member countries had passed a resolution declaring rinderpest to have been eradicated globally, building on an announcement in May that the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) at its General Session had passed a resolution to the effect that all countries in the world had been formally accredited as free from rinderpest.

‘These events mark the fact that the virus is no longer present in any of its natural hosts on this planet. No longer is it a cause of disease or a constraint to international trade. What is not generally appreciated is that the eradication of rinderpest has yielded benefits that surpass virtually every other development programme in agriculture, and will continue to do so into the future. For example, a preliminary study in Chad shows that over the period 1963 to 2002, each dollar spent on rinderpest eradication led to a benefit of at least US $16, a conservative estimate that only takes into account the benefits from reduced cattle deaths and resulting herd growth, without including secondary impacts on the economy as a whole (Rich and others 2011).

‘Building on the dramatic success of the global effort to eradicate rinderpest we now wish to draw attention to a related but significantly different morbillivirus disease, peste des petits ruminants (PPR), also known variously as goat plague, pseudorinderpest, pneumoenteritis and kata. A comprehensive review of the disease by research scientists at the Institute for Animal Health Pirbright laboratory (IAH Pirbright) is published in this issue of Veterinary Record and explains the scientific basis for considering eradication (Baron and others 2011).

‘Until relatively recently PPR was considered to be a parochial disease of west Africa; however, its range is now recognised to affect most of sub-Saharan Africa as well as a swathe of countries from Turkey through the Middle East to south Asia with recent alarming extensions into north Africa, central Asian countries and China. Capable of causing very high mortality in susceptible goat herds and sheep flocks, PPR exerts a major economic impact on farmers and their families dependent on small ruminants. There is a growing appreciation that PPR is a most serious constraint to the livelihoods of farming families and to food security in affected countries and that its control warrants significant investment. An additional concern is the lethal nature of PPR infection in wildlife species, many of which are endangered or threatened, including gazelles and mountain caprines. Until recently, losses were apparently restricted to extensive wildlife collections in the Middle East but now outbreaks are being recognised in free-ranging species such as the Sindh ibex (Capra aegagrus blythi) in Pakistan. It is probable that many cases of wildlife disease have passed unnoticed in remote locations.

‘Encouraged by what has been achieved with rinderpest and an understanding that the factors that marked rinderpest eradication as feasible apply equally to PPR, we believe that a global programme for the total eradication of PPR should be established as an international undertaking without delay. The FAO has recently hosted a number of symposia and workshops at which participating chief veterinary officers have unanimously requested such a global initiative against PPR. . . .’

Read the whole editorial in Veterinary Record: Rinderpest eradicated; what next?, 2011: 169. DOI:10-11 doi:10.1136/vr.d4011

Read a paper by Peter Roeder and ILRI scientist Karl Rich, The global effort to eradicate rinderpest, IFPRI Discussion Paper 00923, November 2009, prepared for the project on Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development.