Tag Archives: Lindiwe Sibanda

Cultivate the future! How learning together can mean learning better and faster–speeding research into use

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If you missed it earlier this month, watch this animated 5-min video on what can help agricultural research by CGIAR and others ‘go to scale’.

Below is the full transcript of the video, which public awareness staff of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) helped to create with Patti Kristjanson and others working in and with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The narrator is Zimbabwean food policy expert Lindiwe Sibanda, who is chief executive officer and chief of mission of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and chairs ILRI’s board of trustees. The developers are  artist/illustrator James Durno and videographer Dale Ballantine, both of South Africa (Indie Village Creative).

‘The world is changing fast. We don’t know how we’re going to produce enough food to feed nine billion people and not destroy the environment in the process. So many more people to feed, escalating food and energy crises, water shortages, a changing climate, and the list goes on . . . .

‘So here we are, a group of scientists working for a food-secure future, meeting in sunny California. We’re here to rethink how we do science to make a bigger difference. We want to help transform the developing world’s agriculture and food systems. (We’re nothing if not ambitious!)

‘People are adaptable. Farmers are adaptable. So are scientists. We’re changing how we work and trying new approaches to solve the big, so-called ‘wicked problems’: e.g., poverty, climate change, environmental destruction and loss of species.

‘This is good, but it’s not good enough.

We’re running out of time; our wicked problems are likely to overrun our solutions unless we learn together, better and faster.

‘Here is the good news: We have evidence that we can speed things up, bring real benefits to people and bring these to scale. (Well, maybe the latter is more of a hypothesis, one that this group wants to test.)

‘Here are some examples of what we’re doing differently.

  • Crowd-sourcing is now being tested to understand what seeds and seedlings different people want, and how to best serve those diverse needs.
  • Learning alliances are bringing private-sector executives to farmers’ fields to learn first-hand from farmers struggling to feed their families; they then work with the farmers and scientists to develop and release varieties that make a difference on those small farms.
  • Innovative mentoring programs are speeding women’s advancement in agricultural sciences and their institutions in the developing world.
  • Farmer-business hubs are bringing together farmers, agri-businesses, NGOs. Farmers get training, seeds, credit and market information. They sell their milk, share their knowledge and earn money.
  • Participatory selection and breeding of crops is addressing women’s needs for foods that use less wood and take less time to prepare.
  • Farmer-to-farmer learning videos, radio and tv programs are spreading the word of best practices based on science and speeding adoption of new technologies.

‘And I’m sure all of us can think of many other examples. Whatever fancy terms we use, at the end of the day, it’s all about people, people from different backgrounds, people with different perspectives and expertise forming partnerships to learn from each other and solve complex problems.

But here’s the rub. We’ve all experienced how messy and time-consuming partnerships can be and how hard it is to take successes to scale.

‘What we may not always appreciate is just how beneficial this joint learning can be. These approaches tend to level the playing field, empower individuals and communities, create benefits that endure, and truly build local capacity.

‘So we can see that shifting how we do science in this way really works. What we can’t see yet is how to involve more people and speed it all up so that our solutions appear to us as to be big as our problems.

‘Let’s focus less on the present and instead view the present through the future we want to create. Just recall the skepticism around the sequencing of the human genome, and yet now, we are in that world.

Our research suggests that what’s going to be critical in the future is creating and nurturing spaces to innovate. This doesn’t have to take a lot of time. What it will take is being strategic and intentional about spanning boundaries.

‘Imagine a fertile safe space where diversity is embraced and where we can together grow, spread and harvest our best ideas and successes.

‘We have the pieces; we don’t yet have all the people. But we can create these environments that attract more people and allow us to learn together, better and faster.

Learning together transforms agriculture and lives.

‘Cultivate the future!’

Note: This animated 5-minute video was produced by and for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and launched at CCAFS’ annual science meeting, held in Bodega Bay, California 18–19 Mar 2013.

For more information:
Go to CCAFS 2013 Science Meeting programme. Updates from the event were shared on the CCAFS website and on Twitter (search for #2013CCSL).

For more on the value of social learning and the March CCAFS science meeting, see these earlier posts on the ILRI News Blog:
Agricultural research, climate change and ‘social learning’: How did we get here? 19 Mar 2013.
The world’s ‘wicked problems’ need wickedly good solutions: Social learning could speed their spread, 18 Mar 2013.
Climate change and agricultural experts gather in California this week to search for the holy grail of global food security, 17 Mar 2013.

And on the CCAFS Blog:
Farmers and scientists: better together in the fight against climate change, 19 Mar 2013.
Transformative partnerships for a food-secure world, 19 Mar 2013.

Read Alain de Janvry’s whole paper: Agriculture for development: New paradigm and options for success, International Association of Agricultural Economists, 2010.

For more on the use of ‘social learning’ and related methods by the CCAFS, see the CCSL wiki and these posts on ILRI’s maarifa blog.

The world’s ‘wicked problems’ need wickedly good solutions: Social learning could speed their spread

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Five-minute animated video produced for a Climate Change and Social Learning (CCSL) initiative of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). CCAFS scientists and partners are meeting this week to share their best ideas on how to work better together, and with many others, for a climate-safe future.

Patti Kristjanson, an agricultural economist working out of Nairobi, Kenya (World Agroforestry Centre), for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), opened the latter’s annual science meeting in California yesterday (18 Mar) with a little animated video on ways to combat the world’s ‘wicked problems’. The 70-odd researchers at this meeting are looking for ways to make bigger and faster impacts on increasing global food security while reducing global warming.

The short (5-minute) animated video is worth a look. It sets out the need for speed in scaling up our agricultural successes and encourages us to make more conscious use of something called ‘social learning’.

What’s that? Well, it’s what most of us do most of the time—learn from each other in social gatherings of one kind or another. What Kristjanson and her climate change researchers are advocating, however, is applying social learning methods intentionally and systematically, that is to say, doing research that pays as much attention to the social processes of science and its communication as to the scientific methods it employs and the evidence it generates.

That may not be rocket science for most of us, but it’s still a tall order for most scientists. Kristjanson’s short engaging video, narrated by Zimbabwean food policy expert (and ILRI board chair) Lindiwe Sibanda and produced by two South Africans, artist/illustrator James Durno and videographer Dale Ballantine, chips away at such academic fustiness and scientific exceptionalism, arguing for greater scientist engagement with a greater diversity of people for greater impacts.

The video encourages its viewers to create ‘safe spaces’ for social learning (picture tree nurseries protecting seedlings — seedlings that will grow into trees of knowledge!). In such protected places, scientists and their many new partners can together tackle the wickedly complex problems of today, such as finding ways to grow enough food to feed the world’s increasing population in the face of an increasingly unpredictable climate.

Cultivate the future’, the video exhorts us. ‘Focus on the future, not the past — on our solutions, not our problems.’

The Tree of Life by Gustav Klimt, 1909 (via Wikipaintings)

‘The Tree of Life’ by Gustav Klimt, about 1909, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (via WikiPaintings). 

More information
Read more on the ILRI News Blog about the CCAFS annual science meeting here and here.

For more information on the CCSL initiative, go to CCAFS 2013 Science Meeting programme. Updates from the event are being shared on the CCAFS website and on Twitter (follow #2013CCSL).

For more on the use of ‘social learning’ and related methods by the CCAFS, see the CCSL wiki and these posts on ILRI’s maarifa blog. See also this document by Blane Harvey (Institute for Development Studies [IDS], at the University of Sussex), Jonathan Ensor (University of York), Liz Carlile (International Institute for Environment and Development [IIED]), Ben Garside (IIED), Zachary Patterson (IDS), Lars Otto Naess (IDS): Climate change communication and social learning — Review and strategy development for CCAFS, Oct 2012.

For a recent scientific review of social learning, see this paper: Towards systemic and adaptive governance: Exploring the revealing and concealing aspects of contemporary social-learning metaphors, by Ray Ison, Chris Blackmore and Benjamin Iaquinto, Ecological Economics 87 (2013) 34–42, http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.12.016

Here is an excerpt from the paper:
‘Concerns about the effective governance of situations such as river catchments, watersheds, climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision are widespread. A paucity of effective governance approaches in such situations seemingly exists despite the efforts made in the 40 years since Rittel and Webber (1973) coined the term ‘wicked problems’ to refer to situations that are contested, difficult to bound, involving many stakeholders with socio-technical features (APSC, 2007; Ison, 2008). There is clearly a need for governance innovation (Hajer and Wagenaar, 2003); fortunately recent research, as evidenced by Ostrom’s body of work (see Ostrom, 2007, 2010) demonstrates that commons-type situations are no longer irrevocably committed to tragedy as posited by Hardin (1968). Social learning research is also an innovative response to commons-like, or ‘wicked’, situations (Wals, 2007) but the potential of ‘social learning’ to contribute to the governance of socio-ecological systems is not widely appreciated.’

 

 

 

 

Zimbabwean beef farmer, livestock scientist and agricultural policy thinker assumes chair of ILRI’s Board of Trustees

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Lindiwe Sibanda

Trained animal scientist and practicing commercial beef cattle farmer Lindiwe Sibanda, who for years has been one of the most influential thinkers in agriculture, food security and climate change global policy, has been appointed chair of the ILRI Board of Trustees.

New board chair
The board of trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), at its 38th meeting in New Delhi, India, in November 2012, appointed Lindiwe Majele Sibanda as board chair.

Lindiwe Sibanda takes over from Knut Hove, who has served on ILRI’s board since 2005 and as board chair since November 2009.

Sibanda has served on the ILRI board since 2009, most recently as chair of the board’s human resources and nominations committees.

Sibanda represents three ‘firsts’ for ILRI: She is ILRI’s first female board chair, ILRI’s first board chair from a developing country and the youngest of all of ILRI’s previous board chairs.

Sibanda has a wealth of experience in research, partnerships and management. Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, she received her agricultural training in Egypt, the UK and Zimbabwe, where her doctoral studies focused on the nutritional requirements of lactating goats. Her portfolio includes policy research and advocacy programs on food policies, agricultural productivity and markets, rural livelihoods and climate change.

Since 2004, Sibanda has been CEO and head of mission of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), based in South Africa, where she coordinates high-level policy research and advocacy programs aimed at making Africa a food-secure continent.

On her ‘hot topics’, which include poverty, hunger and malnutrition, water scarcity and climate change, Sibanda is a formidable force. Since 2008, Sibanda has been a leading advocate for Farming First—advocating a holistic approach to sustainable agricultural development. In 2009 she led the No Agriculture, No Deal global campaign and mobilized African civil society organizations to push for the inclusion of agriculture in the Copenhagen negotiations of the United Nations Framework for Climate Change Convention. In 2010 she was invited to serve on the Guardian’s Global Development advisory panel. In 2011, she was nominated to serve on the independent science panel of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.

Sibanda is as forthright as she is committed. This year, for example, at the 35th session of the governing council of the International Fund for Agricultural Research (IFAD), following an address by Bill Gates, Sibanda lamented ‘the lack of leadership amidst the African countries who are yet to put farming first, despite the 2004 CAADAP pledge to dedicate 10% of national budgets in Africa towards agriculture’. She also highlighted the ‘disjoint’ between technology and policy: ‘Despite the technologies being available to farmers for soil/animal management and water harvesting, policies are restricting farmers’ ability to use them.’

In an interview with the Global Citizens Initiative, Sibanda said: ‘I believe the world needs to take a 360 degree approach to development; that is, we must look at development not only for economic gain, but also for social gain and environmental gain. In other words we have to feed the fiscus, feed the family, and feed the environment. Without balancing our investment across these three domains, we will reach a tipping point and our growth will not be sustainable. We are currently taking more than we give back. Our goal should be to reap an optimum yield from our development investments not a maximum yield. Sustainability is about more for less.’

With all her passionate advocating and policy work, Sibanda still finds time in her busy schedule to manage her beef cattle farm in Zimbabwe. (Her imposing livestock credentials outstrip most of the rest of ILRI’s staff, management and board!) Find out more by visiting the FANRPAN website.

Two new board members
At the same November 2012 meeting of ILRI’s board of trustees, ILRI board members and management welcomed two new members to ILRI’s board.

Rodney Cooke, British, was until recently director of the Policy and Technical Advisory Division at the International Fund for Agricultural Research (IFAD), based in Rome. Before this (1995–2000), Cooke was director of the Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Development, in Wageningen, Netherlands. Before that, he was deputy director of the Natural Resources Institute, in Chatham, UK. Cooke brings a wealth of experience in agriculture and rural development, including aspects such as institutional appraisal, corporate planning and management of change; project identification, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; R&D management and technology transfer and training programs. Trained in biochemistry in the UK and US, Cooke has a breadth of skills in conventional science through to its application in agricultural development. He has worked in Latin America, Africa, India and Southeast Asia. View a recent presentation Cooke made at a Science Symposium hosted by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics: Smallholder farmers confronting rain-fed agriculture: lessons learnt as we approach the MDGs of 2015.

Suzanne Petersen is also British but based in the USA, where she has been a marketing, brand, business and product manager for Land O’Lakes Purina Feed, leading the company’s marketing of feed for cattle, dairy cows and swine. Trained in physiology and poultry feed research in the UK and Australia, Petersen has  considerable experience in the feed sector, including market analysis and strategy development in a private sector context in Switzerland and the United States. She brings a unique blend of private sector, feeds research, business development and marketing skills to ILRI’s board. Find out more about Petersen’s work and company at the Land O’Lakes website: http://www.lolfeed.com/

'The New Harvest' in Africa: Untapped potential or looming catastrophe?

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The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa_By Calestous Juma

The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa, by Calestous Juma (photo credit: Harvard's Belfer Center).

Madeleine Bunting discusses in the Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog today (3 December 2010) a new report by Harvard academic Calestous Juma, The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa.

Bunting says: 'Rising food prices and terrible future scenarios of the impact of climate change on food production, are focusing minds on what is perceived as Africa's huge untapped potential for agriculture. This week yet another report from the International Food Policy Research Institute warns that climate change could push prices up by 130%, and calls for unprecedented human ingenuity to meet the challenge of feeding a burgeoning population. . . . Central to all the discussion is the assertion that Africa could produce far more food than it currently does. . . . On one side there is a powerful lobby which argues that biotechnology, massive investment in irrigation and mechanisation are the way forward, and on the other side are those who argue that these kinds of investments are usually tied up in big corporate deals in which local smallholder subsistence farmers lose out. . . . Juma and his prestigious panel of international experts have attempted to pick a politically feasible path between these two positions. . . . [W]hat will delight these very critics is Juma's championing of the smallholder farmer–not as an encumbrance to development but as central to its achievement. . . . China offers a fascinating model for Africa that is radically different from the western model of high-investment, export-orientated agriculture–the carnations from Kenya model. The key to China's success, argues Juma, is "a strong, competent, developmental state". . . .'

SciDev.Net reports today that experts in African food security gave Juma's report a cautious welcome.

'Bruce Campbell, head of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research's (CGIAR) programme on climate change, agriculture and food security, said: "While Juma's book is optimistic, one needs to recognise that there are tremendous challenges that are not very simple to solve". . . .

'And Philip Thornton, a senior scientist at International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya, who led a recent study that concluded global warming could spell a catastrophe for Africa's agriculture, warned that "there are many [climate change] factors that are not under Africa's control".

'These will work in the opposite direction to improvements in yields and new crop varieties, he said. "I was a little surprised when reading the press release about the report as it doesn't make much mention of climate change."'

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, based in South Africa, and a member of ILRI's board of trustees, is a contributing author and member of the report's international advisory panel.

Read the whole articles at the Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog: How can Africa grow more food?, 3 December 2010 and at SciDev,Net: Africa could feed itself, says development expert, 2 December 2010.

Looking to a bright future for livestock research

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Lindiwe Sibanda Lindiwe Majele Sibanda joined the Board of Trustees of ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) in 2009. She has just attended her second meeting, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  ‘By the time I arrived in 2009, it was clear that ILRI would be part of a new Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, and this was a particularly exciting time to join the board,’ she says.  The agreement to join the new Consortium was formally signed this week in Addis Ababa. ‘The Consortium is effectively saying: we are a family with 15 children with different expertise, but we want you to answer to one surname, and the new surname is Poverty Reduction.’  In the past, she says, the centres tended to work in ‘silos’, building their own empires and strengthening the walls between them.  Those days are now over.

Sibanda brings a range of skills to ILRI.  Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, she received her agricultural training in Egypt, the UK and Zimbabwe, where her PhD studies focused on the nutritional requirements of lactating goats. She was known by villagers as ‘the woman who wears gumboots and overalls.’  Since 2004, she has been chief executive officer of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN), based in South Africa, and she still makes regular visits to her beef farm in Zimbabwe.

‘One of the reasons I was keen to join ILRI was because I'd been sceptical about the CGIAR and its contribution to development in the South,’ she says.  ‘At FANRPAN, we found it hard to see how research outputs from centers like ILRI informed policy, and we lacked the sort of evidence we needed in our dialogue with government and others.’ 

As a member of the board, Sibanda hopes she can take the research outputs and messages from ILRI to the wider world, making them relevant and useful to governments, NGOs, the private sector and to the key beneficiaries, the world's poor livestock farmers.  ‘Among other things, I will advocate for more resources,’ she says.  Over the past 30 years or so, funds for agricultural research have declined.  "That's partly because we haven't had enough ammunition, in the shape of good qualitative evidence about the importance of livestock, to counter the decline."

It is time to buck the trend, she says, but that will only happen if research organizations communicate their findings effectively to the outside world. ‘In this new era, I believe we have to invest heavily in communications, and make it clear that scientific research must be properly funded if we are to create a food-secure world where we don't have 1 billion people going to bed hungry every night.’