ILRI / Official

The week ahead at ILRI: December 8–14, 2014

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During the week of  December 8–14, 2014 the following activities will take place at ILRI:


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ILRI Tanzania: compiled by Mercy Becon (M.Becon@cgiar.org)

  • December 9–10: Amos Omore will attend MilkIT lessons synthesis meeting in Lushoto.
  • On December 11, Amos Omore and Mercy Becon will attend an outreach meeting in Dar for the same project.


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ILRI Addis: compiled by Meron Mulatu (m.mulatu@cgiar.org; +251 116 172472)

  • On December 8 LIVES Project  is holding its biannual Project steering Committee meeting at the Konso auditorium. Project Steering Committee members are representatives of Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development of Canada(DFATD), Ministry of Agriculture(MoA), Ministry of Water and Energy, Ethiopian Institute of Research Agricultural Institute (EIAR) Regional Bureaus of Agriculture, Regional Agricultural Research Institutes, and representatives from ILRI and LIVES HQ staff.
  • December 9–11: Berhanu Gebremedhin will travel to Nairobi to present a paper on goat market participation behavior of Ethiopian households at the goat productivity workshop at ILRI HQ.
  • On 12 December, Ephrem Tesema will be attending “Net Work Day” at Ghion Hotel organized by Agri Hub Ethiopia.
  • December 1–10:  IFPRI will have Watersheds with expanded off-farm labor and land tenure modules workshop at the Lalibela auditorium.
  • On Thursday December 11 Addis campus coffee morning.
  • December 8–12: Improving Nutrition Outcomes through Optimized Agricultural Interventions (ATONU)” project inception workshop at the InfoCentre.


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ILRI Southern Africa: compiled by Sikhalazo Dube (s.dube@cgiar.org)

  • December 8–10: Saskia Hendrickx and Godfrey Manyawu will be meeting with  Sabine Homann- Kee Tui (ICRISAT) in Harare to identify entry points for crops x livestock integration in the action sites within the Chinyanja Triangle as part of the Drylands CRP.
  • December 9–10: Sikhalazo Dube will be attending the 3rd CRP Dryland Research Management Committee Meeting at the Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.


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ILRI Uganda: compiled by Brian Kawuma, (B.Kawuma@cgiar.org)

  •  December 7–11: ILRI Uganda will host the Scientific & Partnership Advisory Committee (SPAC) and Program Planning & Management Committee teams of the CG.
  • On Sunday 7th December, the ILRI Uganda team will make a presentation about the pig value chain projects as part of the CRP 3.7 activities in Uganda.
  • December 8–10: The SPAC & PPMC teams will visit Masaka district to meet district authorities and key stakeholders of the pig value chains. Danilo Pezo, Emily Ouma, Brian Kawuma and Peter Lule will accompany them.
  • December 8–12: Robert Ochago the new Gender and M&E Specialist for Uganda will be in Nairobi to meet the M&E team at the ILRI-Nairobi campus for induction sessions on the L&F MEL framework – and how to operationalize it for the UG pig value chain. He will also meet the Livelihoods Gender and Impact team.


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ILRI East and Southeast Asia: compiled by Jackie Escarcha (J.Escarcha@cgiar.org)

  • 8–13 December: Steve Staal will travel to Rome to attend the Humidtropics annual Plan of Work and Budget workshop. This event will enable Program leaders and researchers to go beyond mere aggregation of the outcomes from the various regional Flagship events, or aggregation of ongoing research of Centres and partner institutions. The goal is to enhance strategic understanding of the scientific basis of Humidtropics Program, deepen the coherence within Humidtropics research, and address some fundamental issues, such as revisiting our strategic agenda and crosscutting research portfolio, integration across Strategic Research Themes, research targeting Intermediate Development Outcomes deliverables, and the scientific underpinnings of our site selection. A clear Plan of Work and Budget for 2015 will be the key output of this workshop.
  •  8 December: Lucy Lapar will be in Delhi to join in a high-level roundtable on “Deepening Private Sector Engagement in the Vulnerable and Underserved Markets of Eastern India”. This roundtable, convened by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA), brings together a high-level small group of individuals from the corporate, civil society, government, and research sectors to address one of India’s most urgent challenges to food security and economic growth—how to encourage private sector innovation and investment in accelerating productivity growth in eastern India’s vulnerable and underserved markets while simultaneously conserving the environment.
  •  8–9 December: Fred Unger will participate and facilitate sessions in the ComAcross regional workshop in Bangkok, an EU funded OneHealth project implemented in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.
  •  11 December: Hung Nguyen, Fred Unger and Lucy Lapar will participate in the Pig Risk project review and planning meeting with Vietnamese collaborators to be held in Hanoi.


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ILRI South Asia: compiled by Oli Roma (R.Oli@cgiar.org; +919990401404)

  • December 8–13: Vamsidhar Reddy would be accompanying Dr Rasheed Sulaiman for undertaking study to understand policy bottlenecks for small-holder dairy in Bihar.
  • December 8–16: Jane Gitau will be visiting with Braja and Dhiraj to CSISA sites in Bihar and Odisha for documenting the ongoing field activities.
  • December 9–11: V. Padmakumar and Thanammal will attend MilkIT review meeting in Tanzania.
  • Padma will be in Tanzania (7-10 Dec.) to participate in the MilkIT review.  He will then travel to Nairobi (11–12 Dec.) and Addis (13-15) to have bilateral discussions with Polly, Okeyo, Bernard, Boni and Wubalem on the new phase of TATA programme and CCAFS (Flagship 1.1) project.
  • December 12–15: Dhiraj Singh will be in Chitwan, Nepal to settle the CSISA Impact Study payments to Coordinator and Enumerators and will also visit the Forward Office to get updates on the CSISA work in Kailali, Nepal.


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ILRI Nairobi: compiled by Angeline Nekesa (a.nekesa@cgiar.org; +254 20 422 3863)

Directorate

  • 9–12 Dec: Iain Wright will be travelling to Rome to attend the Plans of Work and Budgets (POWB) meeting.

Animal Sciences for Sustainable Productivity (ASSP)

  • 8–12 Dec: Ben Lukuyu will be in Lushoto Tanzania to attend a Synthesis meeting of IFAD MilkIT project
  • 8–13 Dec: Henry Kiara will be in Lushoto Tanzania for AGRITT Blood Sampling activities
  • 8–17 Dec: Jane Gitau will travel to Patna, Bhubaneswar & Mayurbhanj India to attend Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project meetings

BecA-ILRI hub

  • 8–9 December: The BecA-ILRI Hub will receive Ian Watson, the Africa Agricultural Productivity Partnership (AAPP) CSIRO Watson is taking over the partnership leadership from Peter Carberry and will be visiting the BecA-ILRI Hub for an orientation of the partnership and to hold meetings with the ILRI DG and spend time discussing the partnership with the BecA-ILRI Hub director Appolinaire Djikeng and other members of the BecA-ILRI Hub team.
  • 8–10 December: The BecA-ILRI Hub will be hosting a 3-day stakeholder workshop for the African swine fever (ASF) project which is part of the BecA-CSIRO partnership, supported by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The workshop brings together local and regional partners from both sides of the Kenya-Uganda border and will include consultative meetings between implementing partners. The key objective of the workshop which will be held at the PrideInn Hotel Lantana, Nairobi, is to: share results from Phase II of the ASF project; develop and endorse ASF- Prevention, Detection and Response (PDR) action plan; determine partnership structures for implementation of the ASF-PDR in the project area and wider scale out; and contribute final inputs to the project plan.
  • 8–10 December: The BecA-ILRI Hub will host the Sustainable African Goat Productivity Gains Improvement Workshop at the ILRI Nairobi Campus. The 3-day workshop organized by the Swedish funded Harnessing genetic diversity for improved goat productivity project is an opportunity for experts in small ruminant research from Africa and around the globe to share their accomplishments, critically explore a way forward for small ruminant research and to highlight potential new frontiers in this area. The workshop will include presentations on, among other areas: goat production and husbandry; goat production and breeding; goat genomics resources and biosciences; markets and value chains – goat business; and policies and innovation platforms. These dialogues are aimed at guiding efforts to strategically apply science and technology to improve African livelihoods.
  • 8–10 December: The Capacity and Action for Aflatoxin Reduction in Eastern Africa (CAAREA) project will be holding a 3-day planning workshop at the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Arusha, Tanzania. The workshop which is hosted by Tanzania project partner Professor Martin Kimanya will bring partners together to finalize the details of timelines, activities, work-plans, monitoring and evaluation strategy and other aspects of the next phase of the four year flagship project funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under the Africa Agricultural Productivity Partnership (AAPP) between BecA and CSIRO.
  • 10–11 December: Appolinaire Djikeng will participate in the African Orphan Crops Consortium (AOCC) Steering Committee meeting at ICRAF, Nairobi. The AOCC is a consortium of companies, scientific and government/Regional bodies, and civil society organizations that aims to complement AU/NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in improving agricultural productivity and achieve food and nutrition security on the African continent. The consortium is building the capacity of African plant breeders through the African Plant Breeding Academy which has the mandate to train 250 African scientists and 500 African technicians in plant breeding techniques.

CCAFS East Africa

  • 6–10 Dec: COP 20 in Lima, Peru James Kinyangi and Maren Radeny  together with a number of CCAFS program staff will participate in a series of engagements including: CCAFS official side event on climate-smart agriculture on 8th , Landscapes Forum on 6th  -7th ,  CCAFS – CARE  event highlighting farmers’ issues under climate change on 7th , and seminar for farmers and youth delegates on climate change negotiations on 8th .
  • 8–10 Dec:  John Recha will attend the Workshop on Sustainable African Goat Productivity Gains Improvement in ILRI.

 Food Safety and Zoonoses

  • 8–9 Dec: Fred Unger  will attend the  ComAcross Regional workshop at Pullman Bangkok King Power hotel, Thailand. http://www.grease-network.org/news/comacross-regional-workshop.
  • 8–12 Dec: Theo Knight-Jones will participate in Annual Global Food Safety Partnership Conference in Cape Town, South Africa.
  • 8–24 Dec: Christine Atherstone will be sampling at central Kampala abattoir for emerging infectious disease investigation in domestic pigs, Uganda.
  • 9 Dec: Delia Grace will attend the Informality and market governance workshop organized by International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London.

Livelihoods, Gender and Impact Program (LGI)

  • 8–11 Dec: Nils Teufel will travel to Tanzania for a MilkIT project meeting.
  • 8–11 Dec: Immaculate Omondi, Emmanuel Kinuthia, Eunice Kariuki and Julius Githinji will attend a training on Open Data Kit (ODK) data collection application that will take place at Hotel Royal Orchid Nairobi.

Policy, Trade and Value Chains (PVTC) program

  • 8–12 Dec: Hikuepi B.  Katjiuongua will be travelling to Botswana to Meet project partners and project coordinator to discuss project activities, review data and analyse data.  Meet with Dr. Baldwin Nengovhela and others at ARC in Pretoria to discuss linkages between Botswana and South Africa ACIAR projects.
  • 10 Dec:  ILRI Graduate Fellow Dirk Landmann will be presenting his work on the evaluation of the Nicaragua Learning Alliance. The seminar will describe the agricultural structure in Nicaragua and the functioning of the Nicaraguan Learning Alliance.  The seminar will be held in Mara house-Sierra room from 10:00 -11:00 am. You can also join the seminar via WebEx  on the following link: https://ilri-icraf.webex.com/ilri-icraf/j.php?MTID=m3e4ace24…

ReSAKSS

  • 9–15 Dec: Joseph Karugia, Paul Guthiga, and Michele Mboo-Tchouawou  will travel  to Washington D.C  to attend the ReSAKSS Data Methodology Workshop, to be held at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
  • 3–15 Dec: Stella Massawe travelled to Washington D.C on 3rd December 2014  to work with an IFPRI GIS coordinator, on E-atlas activities in support of country SAKSS (December 5-10) she will later attend the  ReSAKSS Data Methodology Workshop, December 11-15.
  • 8–12 Dec: Juliet Wanjiku will travel to Arusha Tanzania to attend the Agricultural Market Information Systems and ICT Platforms for Business Management across the Value Chain.

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JOIN THE ILRINET GROUP ON YAMMER AND KEEP ON SHARING…… (KoS)

Meron Mulatu | Communications and Publishing Officer
Email: m.mulatu@cgiar.org