October and November have been busy months. When I reviewed my diary in preparation for writing this blog I saw that I had packed a lot into a short time. So read on to see what I have been up to …….

I spent a fascinating three days in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA on 21-23 October at a meeting arranged by the Institute for Science in Global Policy (ISGP). The Institute, established by a former science advisor to the US State Department brings science and policy together by arranging joint meetings of scientists and policy makers. Each meeting has eight speakers, each asked to prepare a three-page policy brief in advance of the meeting and given five minutes to present the key messages, followed by an hour and a half of questions. They key policy messages are then distilled and published. The topic of the meeting was Food Security and Water and my presentation focused on livestock and water. It was a very successful meeting and I am now working to bring an ISGP meeting to Africa in 2015.

Over the past years ILRI has not invested enough in developing the skills and capacity of our staff, but as you are aware we have been addressing that in the last couple of years and are developing comprehensive program on learning and development. The latest initiative is the e-learning platform, launched on 1 November, which makes available to staff a vast array of different on-line training modules. There are basic modules which staff have been assigned to be completed in the next six months. Please make use of this fantastic resource which is there to help us all do our jobs better.

I attended the meeting of our Board of Trustees in Nairobi on 3-6 November. The Board meets twice per year, in April and November. On the last day of the meeting the Chair of the Board and Committee Chairs give an update at a Town Hall. This is an opportunity for anyone to ask questions to the Board (and Management). I would encourage everyone to attend these meeting which are webex-ed to all ILRI locations.

On 5 November the CGIAR Fund Council, the group of donors who support the CGIAR, arranged a Knowledge Day. The event was planned just before a Fund Council meeting to give the donors an opportunity to interact with the CRPs and Centre staff. It focused on two topics, 1) value for money in the CGIAR and 2) gender. Given the limited time and format it was not possible to get down to great detail on these topics, but it was a very useful exercise in allowing direct interaction between researchers and donors.

On 8 November I was delighted to attend the opening of the new ICRISAT Ethiopia Country Office on campus, in the former Borena Canteen. The opening was attended by Dr Fentahun Mengistu, DG of EIAR, Willie Dar, DG of ICRISAT and several senior ICRISAT staff and visitors. Following the opening there was an exhibition of some of the work by ICRISAT in Ethiopia, including on sorghum and pulses. I am delighted that ICRISAT is investing its resources and energy in the campus and looking forward to working with Dr K P C Rao, the Country Director, and his team on strengthening the links between ICRISAT and ILRI and the other Centres.

On 11-13 November two USAID-funded projects got together to discuss monitoring and evaluation on the campus. The Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) and Africa RISING are large research for development (R4D) projects that aim to sustainably increase productivity of farming systems. I am involved on both projects. When I was based in Delhi I facilitated the establishment of the livestock component in CSISA and the first week after I arrived here in Addis we had the first stakeholder workshop on the Africa RISING Ethiopia Project. Monitoring and evaluation on these R4D projects is challenging because they are not development projects and therefore standard development project methods are not wholly applicable. Also they are not simple experiments that can be evaluated using classical hypothesis testing methods. The aim of the meeting was to learn lessons across the projects and identify appropriate approaches.

The Nile Basin Development Challenge ends this year I attended two very successful events that promoted the key lessons that have emerged from the program. On 15 November there was a very successful Sharefair on campus with a good attendance from partners and stakeholders. The evening before IWMI and ILRI hosted a dinner for policy makers and decision formers at which the same messages were promoted. This was an excellent forum for interacting with people who did not have the time to attending the Sharefair but to whom it is important to get the messages across. Congratulations to Alan Duncan and Simon Langan and the whole team for taking the initiative on these events.

A team from ILRI, led by the DG, Jimmy Smith, met a senior delegation from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), led by the new DG, Dr Fentahun Mengistu on 20 November to explore how EIAR and ILRI can collaborate more effectively. It is no secret that our relationship with EIAR over the years has not been as good as it should be. We had a very productive meeting at which we identified some priority topics for collaboration. Each institute will appoint a contact person for each topic to take the ideas forward and we agreed that we would meet regularly every six months.

Some of our longer serving members of staff may remember Seamus Crosse who used to work at Debre Zeit Research Station in the 1990s. Seamus left Ethiopia to return to his native Ireland and became Director of Moorepark Dairy Research Centre. I met Seamus on 23 November to explore links between ILRI and Vita, an Irish NGO of which he is now a Board Member. There may be future opportunities to work on dairy in Ethiopia.

On 27 November our Biosciences colleagues arranged a day at which they presented and explained the work of the Biosciences programs. It was an excellent day at which many exciting research projects were presented and opportunities for linkages with the Integrated Sciences programs were highlighted. The meeting was held in Nairobi but was available on webex. It was however disappointing that only four members of the Integrated Sciences teams were present, as one of the aims of the meeting was to provide an opportunity for non-Biosciences staff to learn about the Biosciences programs.

I will be travelling to the UK to spend Christmas with my family but will be back in Addis in time to spend Ethiopian Christmas here.

Take care

Iain