Early in January we celebrated Ethiopian Christmas and had the Addis Party on 9 January. I am sorry was not able to welcome you all personally to the party but as many of you know, Regina, my girlfriend took ill early that morning and we had to go to hospital. She is now fully recovered. I was very touched by the many people who were concerned about her health and asked about her. It was heartwarming to know that many of you cared and showed true Ethiopian friendship towards Regina and me. Thank you so much.

On 10 January, Jimmy Smith officially opened the new nutrition laboratory in the former generator house. This provides excellent facilities for developing feed and forage research. It will serve not only ILRI but is a campus-wide resource available to all partners and collaborators including students who need access to feed evaluation. The staff are busy moving the equipment from the old labs which will be converted to much needed office space.

I spend a couple of weeks in Nairobi attending meetings of the Institute Management Committee and Institute Research Management Committee as well as interacting with many colleagues in Kenya. One important discussion was on how we should respond to a request from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a large ($50M) poultry research and development project across five countries in Africa – Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso. This offers an exciting opportunity to develop a major project that can use conventional breeding techniques and cutting edge science to make a big impact on the lives of millions of people.

Some of us spent two or three days at the end of the month discussing and designing a potential major new research program on sustainable intensification and climate change in Ethiopia. With participation from CGIAR centres and EIAR. We had a series of presentations on the first day on some of the key concepts and challenges and then spend a second day considering what the overall aim and scope of the program might be as well as identifying some of the critical components. A small group developed some of the ideas further on Day 3. This will be a major program with an aspirational budget of $50M over 5 years. We aim to have a draft proposal by the end of April which will form the basis of further discussion with major stakeholders and donors in Ethiopia.

Iain