I spent the first four days of December at a write-shop at Lake Naivasha Country Club, with a team of about 25 people developing the proposal for the new Livestock CRP. While we worked on updates to the whole document, we concentrated on the C-rated parts of the pre-proposal, taking account of the comments of the Independent Science and Partnership Council (ISPC). We had to re-submit these parts to the ISPC, which we did on 18 December (during the Nairobi end of year party!). We made a lot of progress and are now well set up to move forward to writing the full proposal which needs to be submitted by 31 March. Many thanks to all who participated and contributed to the writeshop.

I thought my football career ended at the age of 11 when I was dropped as goalkeeper of my primary school football team. It was therefore a shock when I was told I had been ‘selected’ to be part of a mixed bunch of players in a team against the Never Say Die Ladies at the traditional end of year football match on 15 December. I imagined an ignominious thrashing by a record breaking score, but thanks to the much better skills of my team mates we got by with a respectable 1-0 defeat. I even managed two shots on goal – one hit the side net and the other the cross bar – so maybe I could make a late career come back on the football pitch.

I get many requests to be ‘friends’ on Facebook, but two weeks ago I got one that surprised me – a request to be friends with my 83 year old mother in Scotland!  Yes, my mother is now on Facebook. We already chat on Skype and Facetime, but Facebook – how cool is that! It’s less than 9 months since she got an iPad, an email address and got connected to the internet. I was reminded how dependent we have all become on the internet when a couple of months ago she had no internet access for three days.  It was a disaster, she was complaining that she could not email her friends, receive pictures of her grandchildren etc etc. She was not impressed when I pointed out that she had survived for 82 years without internet and that 3 days without email in her 83^rd year was not the end of the world. Our dependency on the internet was also highlighted by an amusing sign outside a café in Cape Town, where Regina and I spent Christmas:

As 2015 ends and 2016 begins I cannot remember a time in my professional career which has so much uncertainly and so much opportunity at the same time.

Uncertainty because of the changing nature of our funding – Jimmy has already mentioned this in his New Year message to staff. We were faced with some tough decisions in 2015 as a result of reduction of Window 1 and 2 funding and 2016 is unlikely to bring any increase in that source of funding. But at the same time we were successful in securing several large Window 3 and bilateral grants.

I believe the opportunity to mobilize significant resources is significant, if we can align our programs to the big development challenges that the world is facing and which are embodied in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were approved by all UN Member States in September.

The new CGIAR Strategy and Results Framework is well aligned to support the SDGs and sets us some challenging but achievable targets on how we will contribute. There is an increasing interest from governments and investors in the contribution that the livestock sector can make to achieving those goals which gives ILRI a unique opportunity.

A top priority for me in 2016 is to work with you all to grasp that opportunity by working to ensure a Livestock CRP proposal which will set the framework for a high quality global livestock research agenda that donors will be persuaded to invest in, leading and supporting resource mobilization through the development of high quality fundable proposals and positioning ILRI amongst the top performing research institutes in the CGIAR, at corporate, program and individual levels.

So at the start of a new year let me wish you and your families best wishes for 2016 and let us all work hard to make ILRI a high performing organization whose outputs results in millions of  better lives through livestock.

Iain