This is my final blog posting for 2016. December was rather a short month work-wise as I went on leave on 21 December to travel to Scotland for Christmas. It was good to see my mother and family, albeit only for a week before returning to Nairobi for New Year. Christmas day was the second warmest in Scotland since records began – it was 15^oC near Aberdeen but the next day the temperatures plummeted and we woke up to snow.  And the President Elect of the US does not believe in climate change!

Professor Sam Black

Prof Sam Black, University of Massachusetts

Earlier in December I enjoyed meeting Sam Black who worked at ILRAD from 1979-89 and now a professor at the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences at University of Massachusetts. Sam has written two chapters for the ‘Impact Book’ that we will be publishing this year, highlighting the impact of research at ILRAD, ILCA and ILRI. He is still researching the molecular basis for control of African Trypanosomiasis and gave an interesting seminar on some of his team’s latest work. 

Quality of Research in the CGIAR

The Independent Science and Partnership Council of the CGIAR has been asked to consider how quality of research in the CGIAR should be assessed. It has established a small task force to take this forward on which I represent the DDGs for Research. We had the first (virtual) meeting just before Christmas. We have finalized the terms of reference for the task force and agreed on a couple of background studies that we will commission. A workshop with a broader range of participants is planned for February in Rome and we should produce our report by June this year.

Benchmarking scientists’ performance

I have been working with Program Leaders and POD on new Guidelines and Procedures for Benchmarking of Scientists’ Performance which we launched at a meeting of all IRS Scientists on 13 December.  As the CGIAR becomes more performance oriented it is important that individual scientists and their managers are clear about what levels of performance are expected. The document sets this out in a transparent manner and will help guide the setting of KRAs, performance assessment, promotion decisions and decisions on contract renewal. The guidelines will be posted on the POD micro-site soon.

It doesn’t seem like 10 years

In my Delhi office in 2006

It doesn’t seem like 10 years since I joined ILRI, but I received my 10-year certificate at the End of Year Party in Nairobi. It has been my great privilege to work for ILRI since 1 October 2016. I was based in India for just over five years as Regional Representative for Asia, then two and a half years in Addis Ababa where I led the Animal Science for Sustainable Productivity Program and was the DG’s Representative in Ethiopia and I have been in Nairobi as DDG-Research since June 2014.

Someone asked me last month of I was jaded after a 40-year research career. The answer is an emphatic no! I am as excited about science and research as I was when I was a PhD student. Thanks to science the world is a safer place to live in today than at any time in history. People are living much longer, are better educated and on average are more wealthy than ever before. And there are many, many more of us. Science has been the main driver of these changes. To give one example, without the science that developed nitrogenous fertilizer it is estimated that the world could only support a maximum of about 4 billion people, not the 7.5 million we have at present. Even before that, the industrial revolution in Northern Europe would not have been possible without the agrarian revolution that preceded it, which led to large increases in agricultural production through increases in land and labour productivity. A series of innovations such as crop rotation, land drainage, selective breeding of livestock and even the introduction of the humble turnip allowing farmers to feed their livestock in winter, all contributed to the huge increase in productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. More recently, in Asia much of the economic growth in the past half century was based initially on agriculture and there is a growing realization that in Africa agricultural development is the key to development.

The world faces unprecedented challenges in terms of food production, distribution and access, poverty reduction and economic growth, and natural resource management, but the scientific opportunities to tackle those challenges and contribute to their solutions are immense. There probably has never been a more exciting time to be a scientist with a whole raft of new tools, methods and approaches that were not dreamt of when I started my scientific career. And we in ILRI are uniquely placed to contribute through our livestock research for development.

With good wished to you all for 2017.

Iain