Technologies for African Agriculture Transformation

I spent a considerable amount of time this month developing the livestock component of the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program. This is an initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB) as part of the Feed Africa Strategy. The President of the AfDB, Akinwumi Adesina has put agriculture at the heart of the new AfDB strategy. TAAT seeks to scale out proven technologies and other interventions from CGIAR and other research organizations in supporting the transformation of agriculture in Africa. The model is to develop consortia (or ‘compacts’) of CGIAR Centres, national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES), private sector and others to take proven interventions to scale. With an initial investment of about USD50 million per year for three years the idea is to leverage further funding from loans to government from AfDB, the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and others to extend the program. ILRI leads the livestock compact and we are currently developing a proposal with the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and others that focusses initially on poultry and small ruminants in a limited number of countries. Iddo Dror and I attended a meeting at the AfDB headquarters in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire on 9-10 January and Augustine Ayantunde, Tunde Amole and I were at a follow-on meeting at IITA in Ibadan, Nigeria on 22-24 January. Iddo is leading the team developing the proposal.

African Migration and Development Policy Centre 

On 17 January several ILRI staff meet with staff from the African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC). AMADPOC, based in Nairobi, was established in 2008 and conducts and streamlines policy-oriented research, training and capacity building and policy dialogue on various forms of migration and their interrelationship with the development within sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. We had very fruitful discussions on the links between livestock and migration and identified some common areas of interest. We have established a small working group to follow up on those discussions and to develop some idea for joint projects.

Visit from Heifer International

On 30 January to 1 February we hosted a delegation from Heifer International.  We have been working with Heifer International for some time, most notably in the East Africa Dairy Development Project. As a development organization focused on livestock it became clear from the discussions that Heifer International is an obvious partner for ILRI with which to develop a strategic relationship. Many areas of potential collaboration were identified. We agreed to set up a small task force of staff from each organization to map out and prioritize how we move forward together.

Till next month.

Iain