I have had a number of comments over the last 9 months about the fact that I have not been writing my monthly ramblings and musings. So I have made an early 2016 New Year’s Resolution to be more diligent, starting from this month.

Board meeting

The month started in Washington with the meeting of the ILRI Board of Trustees.  The meeting had been planned for Addis but we had to re-arrange it for Washington to allow Jimmy and the Board Chair to attend important meetings with the CGIAR Fund Council, which were held the same week. It seemed that the whole of the CGIAR was in town as I couldn’t walk down the street without bumping into a CGIAR colleague.

The Board Meeting was generally positive but as you would expect the members were holding Management to account and through Jimmy, who is a full member of the Board, asking relevant and pertinent questions and providing valuable advice. CGIAR Centre Boards, including the ILRI one, have changed a lot in the past nine years since I joined ILRI. They are, quite rightly, focused on the governance and oversight of ILRI as a research business and ensuring that the Institute is fit for purpose, has the necessary procedures in place to be a scientifically and financially viable organization. While the science is critical other aspects of the business are also crucial and each committee has a specific role in the oversight of different functions – programs, human resources, finance, audit and the nominations committee that ensures that the board as a whole and committees have the necessary expertise to allow the Board to discharge is responsibilities.

The short reports to staff from the Board and its committees can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n26qgYPB100

Meeting at USAID

While in Washington Boni Moyo and I took the opportunity to visit USAID and in particular Jerry Glover who manages the USAID program on sustainable intensification of which the Africa RISING program is a flagship component. Those of you in Addis may remember Jerry, who stayed for several months on the ILRI campus with his family a couple of years ago. We are working on a proposal for a second phase of the Africa RISING project (in West Africa, Ethiopia and East and Southern Africa.  USAID is keen to see a greater emphasis on the livestock component in phase 2 so we will work hard with our partners to achieve that.

We also met our former colleague, Elaine Grings,  who worked with the ILRI feeds team and is now a Livestock Officer in USAID. In particular she is looking after the new USAID Feed the Future Livestock Systems Innovation Lab, which is being led by University of Florida with ILRI as a key partner. The program will cover Burkina Faso, Mali, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nepal and Cambodia. ILRI will provide the regional coordination, provide inputs to the prioritization of the program and be involved in specific research activities.  The Director of the program Adegbola, Adesogan from Florida will be visiting Ethiopia in December with a team from USAID and will also meet ILRI staff.

International Grassland Congress

I attended the International Grassland Congress in Delhi on 20-24 November, along with 650 other delegates. I met many old friends and colleagues whom I know from my 5½ years in India as well as grassland and rangeland researchers from around the world whom I know from my time as a grassland researcher (yes I used to be a researcher in a previous life!).

I gave a plenary paper ‘ Importance of livestock production from grasslands for national and local food and nutritional security in developing countries’ and I am very grateful to my co-authors Polly Ericksen, Andrew Mude, Lance Robinson and Jason Sircely for doing much of the work on the paper. I received many favourable comments after the presentation which covered biological, economic and social sciences with a sprinkling of politics.

It was agreed that the next Congress will be held in Kenya in 2019, the first time in Africa.  There is a strong possibility that it will be a joint Congress with the International Rangeland Congress.  I have promised the organizers strong support from ILRI as I believe that the Congress will attract a large number of delegates and provide an opportunity to showcase Kenya and East Africa and also ILRI’s research in this area.

Visit to Hyderabad

Following the International Grassland Congress, I took the opportunity to visit Hyderabad to meet the ILRI staff there as well as have discussions with ICRISAT management on strengthening ILRI-ICRISAT collaboration on dryland farming systems. Peter Carberry, DDG ICRISAT and I identified a number of areas that we will seek to strengthen and jointly mobilize resources for both in India and in Africa. I also visited the new National Institute of Animal Biotechnology in Hyderabad, following up on visits made by Jimmy and Vish previously. Many of the programs in this new institute which are just getting underway but there are already some areas of potential collaboration.

Till next month

Iain