Visiting scientist – Lora Iannotti

Prof Lora Iannotti

I am very pleased that we have entered into an agreement with the Brown School at Washington University in St Louis and Prof Lora Iannotti to have her as a visiting scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). Iannotti is associate dean for Public Health at Brown School and has expertise in maternal and young-child nutrition and nutrient deficiencies (zinc, iron, vitamin A, B12, choline, and fatty acids) related to poverty and infectious diseases. She currently leads projects in Haiti, Ecuador, and East Africa where she collaborates with local partners to test innovative, transdisciplinary approaches using animal source foods and small livestock and fisheries development. She is the founder and director of the E3 Nutrition Lab, which is working to identify economically affordable, environmentally sustainable and evolutionarily appropriate nutrition solutions globally. She will be able to strengthen our research on the role of animal-source foods in healthy diets and contribute to our advocacy work in this area.

Meeting with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition

On 2 May we received a delegation from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) including the Kenya country director. GAIN works to help a billion people in developing countries access more affordable and nutritious food with strong working partnerships with the private sector. We had very constructive discussions on how we could work together on the importance of animal-source foods in healthy diets.

ILRI Board meeting

The 51^st meeting of the ILRI Board of Trustees was held in Addis Ababa from 5-8 May. The Board provides governance and oversight to ILRI and through the director general (who is also a member of the Board) holds the management of the institute to account. The Board has three sub-committees, Program, Finance and Audit and Risk, although all Board member are members of the sub-committees. Members of Institute Management Committee (IMC) and several other staff are invited to attend most of the meeting as observers and as resource people to support the director general in discussions. I am secretary of the Program Committee and work closely with the chair of the Program Committee, Martyn Jeggo and Shirley Tarawali, who is secretary to the Board, to devise the agenda and ensure all papers and presentations for the Program Committee are appropriate for the committee to fulfil its governance and oversight function.

Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation steering committee meeting

The steering committee of the African Development Bank program, Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), met in Abidjan on 15-17 May. TAAT is part of the African Development Bank’s Feed Africa Initiative. It is led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) with many CGIAR centres and other organizations contributing. The program aims to scale out proven technologies to improve agricultural productivity across the continent. ILRI leads the work on livestock (small ruminants and poultry). I have been representing the implementing centres on the steering committee, but the meeting this month was my last as I have handed over the role to Ramadjita Tabo, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) director for west and central Africa.

Visit from chair of the CGIAR Standing Panel on Impact Assessment

The chair of the CGIAR Standing Panel on Impact Assessment (SPIA), Karan Macours, visited ILRI on 20 May to learn more about ILRI and our impact assessment. Assessing the impact of ILRI’s research and livestock research for development more generally is a challenge. In the livestock sector, it is very rare for a single research product to have large-scale impact because of the need to ensure that for example, animals of higher genetic merit also have better feeding and veterinary care. Some impact assessment experts tend to focus on quantitative impacts, which while important can be incredibly difficult to measure. I was therefore very pleased to know that Macours takes a broader view of impact assessment including the need to use quantitative and qualitative measures. She also recognizes that it is not only the final impact that need to be assessed but also the intermediate impacts and outcomes such as policy change.

CGIAR science leaders meeting

Tom Randolph and I were at the annual CGIAR science leaders meeting at the System Management Office on 3-6 June. The science leaders are the deputy directors general – research and the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) directors. The main item on the agenda was discussion on how the CGIAR research portfolio should be decided for 2022 onwards and how it should be managed. We were asked some questions by the System Reference Group (specifically by the chairs of the three working groups). After three days of deliberations there was a remarkable degree of alignment in the group and we presented a summary of our conclusions to the three chairs. This was only one input to these groups so we will await with interest what emerges later in the year.

Meeting with the United Nations Environment Programme

At the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 4) in Nairobi in March it became clear that there were several of areas of mutual interest between ILRI and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). We therefore invited a delegation from UNEP to visit us and received them on 14 June. We had an excellent discussion and the more we discussed the more topics we identified in common. These covered a range of activities such as contributing to UNEP reports, membership of scientific committees and task forces, contributing to discussion facilitated by UNEP and developing collaborative studies. We agreed to move forward to sign a memorandum of understanding and to have ILRI registered on the UNEP Partnership Portal.

Visit by the Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network 

During 2019 the CGIAR is being assessed by the Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN). MOPAN was launched in 2002 as a network of like-minded donor countries for monitoring the performance of multilateral development organizations. All members have a common interest in knowing more about the effectiveness of multilateral organizations through joint assessments of these organizations, exchange of information and expertise in monitoring and evaluation.

The network’s assessments identify strengths and areas for improvement in the multilateral organizations. Findings are used for discussions with the organizations and with their partners, and as ways to further build the organizations’ capacity to be effective. Network members also use assessment findings as a source of input for strategic decision-making about their ways of engaging with the organizations, and as an information source when undertaking individual reviews.

The assessment is of CGIAR but two centres were selected (ILRI and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center [CIMMYT]) along with the CRPs that they lead for a site visit. We had a consultant with us for three days on 19-21 June reviewing many of the processes and procedures of ILRI and the Livestock CRP and their relationship with the CGIAR System. I want to thank all those involved in the visit for the time they spent on the assessment.

Gender in the workplace

Finally, I recommend the following two articles on gender in the workplace. Thanks to Polly Ericksen and Nicoline de Haan for drawing attention to them.

A seat at the head of the table

Women score higher than men in most leadership skills

Till next month.

Iain