I recently chaired the first meeting of the Addis Health and Safety Committee since I arrived here.  The other members of the committee are Alexandra Jorge, Joseph Saburi, Aster Tsige, Tesfaye Kifle, Tibebe Gebreamlak, Admassu Wondimu, Habtamu Fekadu and Kebede Alemu. This committee will meet quarterly and we are developing a rolling program of safety issues that we need to consider (e.g. fire risk, chemical storage, food safety and hygiene).  I am a member of the Institute Health and Safety Committee which is chaired by the DG and can represent Addis health and safety issues on the main committee. While management must take the lead, everyone must take health and safety seriously.  The health and safety of everyone on the campus, including staff, visitors, contractors and residents is the concern of all of us.  If anyone has any concerns about health and safety they should raise the matter with their supervisor. If it is a general issue it can be brought to the attention of one of the committee members.

I made my first visit to Malawi in early March to attend a meeting of the Africa RISING program.  It is a $50 million USAID program comprising three projects, in West Africa, Ethiopia and East and Southern Africa.  ILRI is involved in all three projects and we lead the Ethiopia project, managed by Peter Thorne. The Ethiopia project is an excellent example of the CGIAR centres working together with other national and international partners.  The program aims to sustainably intensify mixed crop-tree-livestock systems.  In Ethiopia this is focused on the Ethiopian Highlands and is testing hypotheses about the combinations of technologies that are needed to increase in a sustainable way whole farm productivity.

The LIVES project held a research planning workshop on 26-28 March.  This brought together the LIVES team (ILRI and IWMI) and other ILRI researchers with research and development partners from a wide range of organisations. Some key research issues, questions and methods were identified for each of the value chains that LIVES will be working on. I was very impressed by the level of engagement from all the participants, both from ILRI and the other partners, and there were many excellent discussions and suggestions. This augers well for the future and for working well with all our partners.