April was a busy month on campus. We hosted the Board of Trustees meeting under the chairmanship of our new Chair, Lindiwe Majele Sibanda. The Board enjoyed the retreat to Debre Zeit on Sunday 7 April where they had some important informal discussions before they got down to the main meeting and committee meetings on 8-9 April.  The main points of discussion were summarized at the Town Hall on the final day of the meeting and I don’t need to repeat them here. Overall it was a very positive meeting with the board members appreciating the challenges and opportunities in the new CGIAR.  I want to thank everyone on the campus who provided support to the board meeting for ensuring that everything ran smoothly and for ensuring that the board and senior management had a comfortable, productive and enjoyable stay.

On 5 April representatives of the CGIAR centres in Addis met staff from the FAO Sub-regional East Africa Office, which is now headed by our former board member, Modibo Traore.  The aim was to explore areas where FAO and the CGIAR centres can work more closely together. We had very positive discussions with the outcome that I will chair a small Task Force, with 2-3 members from each of FAO and the CGIAR to identify some ‘low hanging fruits’ where we can begin to work together as well as longer term opportunities.

Photo credit: IFAR

This month also saw the return of Hank Fitzhugh, former ILRI DG, to the campus. He was visiting Ethiopia with colleagues from Texas A & M University to explore the possibility of establishing a project to use the suite of models developed at Texas A & M to perform ex ante analysis of potential development interventions in Ethiopian agriculture.  We had very positive discussions about involvement of ILRI and IWMI in the project proposal.

As part of a CGIAR Consortium Office initiative to identify opportunities for shared services, a consultant appointed by the Consortium Office visited Addis for two days to examine how services are managed on the campus.  He interacted with a number of ILRI and hosted institute staff.  Following a similar visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh and further discussion with other CGIAR centres he will produce his report.

At the end of the month Barry Shapiro successfully won a contract from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $670,000 to assist in the development of the Livestock Master Plan for Ethiopia. As part of the CRP on Policies, Institutions and Markets the project will work with the Ministry of Agriculture  to facilitate the use of the Livestock Sector Investment and Policy Toolkit which can analyse the likely impact of investment in different components of a country’s livestock sector.  The project will also draw on the expertise of Mohamadou Fadiga as well as KMIS for communication support.

I spent 10 days back home in the UK at the end of the month. After a weekend in London with my daughter – and seeing Kebebe win the men’s London marathon – I spent almost a week in North East Scotland with my son and mother. Many of you may have seen the reports of severe storms in Europe earlier this month, with very late snow falls which buried many animals, especially sheep. The snow has gone but the weather was still colder than normal for the time of year with farmers complaining that sowing of the spring cereal crop was 3-4 weeks behind schedule – a reminder of how vulnerable farmers all over the world are to the vagaries of the weather.