ILRI news

Cows standing in the compound after grazing in Chokwe, Mozambique. A new study calls for improved integration between epidemiology and economics to understand economic and poverty impacts of animal diseases (photo credit: ILRI/Mann)

A new study by researchers working with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is recommending use of ‘bottom-up’ approaches that use the strengths offered by value chain analysis and information economics in assessing the impacts of animal diseases and their interaction with socio-economic and institutional factors in developing countries.

Authors Karl Rich, from the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and on joint appointment with ILRI and Brian Perry, an honorary professor of veterinary medicine at the Universities of Edinburgh and Pretoria and formerly a leader of ILRI’s research team on animal health and food safety for trade, say economists and epidemiologists need to work more closely in assessing the impact of animal diseases. They recommend use of ‘participatory disease surveillance’ approaches that feature models of disease assessment that consider the context in which animal diseases occur and how they affect markets, livelihoods and poverty reduction especially in developing countries where livestock serve diverse commercial and cultural roles which affect disease control efforts.

In a paper ‘The economic and poverty impacts of animal diseases in developing countries: New roles, new demands for economics and epidemiology’ published in the 15 September 2010, online edition of the Preventative Veterinary Medicine journal, the scientists say both value chain analysis and information economics hold particular promise and relevance towards animal disease impact assessment.

They note that ‘normative’ approaches that try to guide how agents affected by diseases should behave (for example by emphasizing elimination of disease while relegating issues of disease mitigation, equity, gender and poverty) have had limited success in reducing poverty and disease prevalence in developing countries. The scientists suggest that new models that consider the context decision makers, farmers and value chain actors face in the event of animal disease outbreaks and what they actually do (not only what they should do) will contribute to more effective pro-poor policymaking.

The paper also recommends harmonizing divergent incentives among different stakeholders in developing countries noting that, for example, integrating the views of political economy and institutions engaged in animal health research will help to focus more broadly and systematically on incentives and the behaviour of those institutions and political actors, thereby helping researchers to better understand the economic impact of diseases.

The paper reviews the livelihoods and poverty impacts of animal diseases in the developing world, with a focus on Rift Valley fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and foot and mouth disease. The paper also analyses the effects of these diseases through a poverty and value chains perspective and highlights ways that lessons from these perspectives can be aligned with disease control initiatives.

Rift Valley fever outbreaks are common in eastern Africa, especially after heavy rains, which lead to rises in numbers of mosquitoes that spread this viral zoonotic disease. Rift Valley fever affects cattle, sheep, goats and camels but also infects and kills humans. A recent outbreak of the disease between 2006 and 2007 killed more than 100 people in Kenya and led to significant loss of animals and livelihoods, especially for pastoralist livestock keepers.

Rich and Perry say the response of different stakeholders to diseases is based on their unique circumstances and constraints and their incentive for compliance also depends on such contexts. Their paper stresses the importance of ‘improved integration between epidemiology of disease and its relationships with economic behaviour.’

The authors call for a holistic look at the livestock sector as a system of interacting actors, each with their own values and constraints. They say that frameworks such as those offered by value chains can help identify the impacts that animal diseases generate. The  value chain framework’s emphasis on relationships, characteristics and dynamics among actors, can help identify not only who is impacted by animal disease but also how and why they are affected and how  different actors might behave and adjust in response to disease outbreaks.

To read the complete paper and its recommendation, click here

This piece is adapted from an original story posted on the Market Opportunities Digest blog written by Tezira Lore, communications specialist for ILRI’s Markets Theme.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

Florence Chepkirui is one of the dairy farmers who are benefitting from improved dairying in Kenya's Bomet district (photo credit: ILRI/Karaimu)

The East African Dairy Development project which is implemented by Heifer International in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), TechnoServe, the World Agroforestry Centre and the African Breeders Service Total Cattle Management, has been working with farmers in east Africa since January 2008. In the past two years, the project has focused on improving the dairy incomes of over 170,000 dairy farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. In Kenya, interventions to improve dairy production in Kenya’s Rift Valley province are transforming the lives of farmers like Florence Chepkirui.

Florence is a resident of Saoset village of Bomet district in Kenya’s south Rift Valley region. The district has a wonderful climate and beautiful farms on rolling hills and valleys. Her two-acre farm supports subsistence crop farming, two dairy cows and fodder that the cows feed on. Florence is one of many smallholder farmers in Saoset and despite her being blind, she has succeeded in earning a living from dairy farming.

Many dairy farmers here are smallholders who keep a few cows in small pieces of land that average about 3 acres. Most of the farming is of a mixed system that also includes tea growing and farming subsistence crops. For a long time, the region’s dairying potential was well known but not realized, but the entry of the East African Dairy Development project there beginning in 2008 is leading to a change in perception about dairy farming and allowing poor farmers to benefit from it.

‘I learnt how to manage my cows – especially better feeding for increased milk production –from the East Africa Dairy Development project staff,’ Florence says. Florence is only able to keep one cow at any one time but she has sold over 6 calves in the past 11 years. She used most of the income from selling the calves – about Ksh 20,000 (US$ 250) per animal – to pay for the education of her three children and to set up a tailoring business which she runs in a shop near her home.

‘Just after calving, the cow produces 16 litres of milk, but at the moment, she is producing 12 litres,’ she says. Florence uses 5 litres of the milk at home and the rest is taken to the nearby Sot milk cooling plant that farmers like her from the village have recently set up with the help of the project. ‘I used to sell most of my milk to informal traders before the Sot cooler plant was established, but income is much better now compared to selling to traders,’ she says.

By working with local community members in Saoset, the project brought farmers together to raise money to set up the milk cooling plant. The contributions of farmers (through shareholding) were supported by funds from the project to purchase a piece of land and set up a building that now houses the cooler. Farmers from the village use the 6000-litre cooler to store their milk before it is collected by a milk processor in Kericho town. 

Florence earns Ksh 19 (US$ 0.23)  for every litre of milk delivered to the plant compared to Ksh 10 (US$ 0.12) hawkers paid her for the same amount of milk. Most dairy farmers relied on hawking milk before the establishment of the cooler which did not guarantee regular or good returns.  

The Sot cooling plant is one of the biggest changes in the village in the recent past and dairy farmers have benefited greatly from its presence. ‘As a shareholder in the cooling plant I feel part of the good things that are happening to our milk business. We have seen many benefits like increased milk production and more money from selling our milk. Our families also benefit from better nutrition,’ Florence says. The partnership between the project and farmers in her village has also opened new opportunities for her to pursue tailoring to supplement income from milk production.

Trainings and farmers visits facilitated by the project have helped farmers in Saoset understand the importance of keeping healthy animals for increased milk production. Currently, the project is facilitating breeding programs to improve cow breeds and many farmers are enthusiastic about the future of the dairy industry in Bomet.  

—-

The East African Dairy Development project started in January 2008 and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of an agricultural development grant designed to boost the yields and incomes of millions of small farmers in Africa so they can lift themselves and their families out of hunger and poverty.

For more information about the project please visit:  http://eadairy.wordpress.com/

Share this post:

Hide Sites

This map from Mapping a Better Future combines poverty rates with milk production data and shows only the poverty rates for administrative areas with milk surplus. By knowing which areas display both high poverty rate and milk surplus, Uganda’s leaders can better provide market opportunities for poorer dairy farmers and target infrastructure investments.

The percentage of the population living below the poverty line is shown from
>dark green (lowest) to > light green (low) to > beige (medium) to > tan (high) to > dark brown (highest).
Gray areas = no data
White areas = outside milk surplus area
Diagonal blue lines = major national parks and wildlife reserves (over 50,000 ha)

To see the original of this and other maps, go here.

A new
 set of maps illustrating possible market 
opportunities for Uganda’s livestock farmers living 
in poverty is being unveiled today. The maps compare for the first time
 2005 poverty levels with livestock data from the 
2002 population and housing census and the 2008 
national livestock census.

‘Seven out of ten households in Uganda own 
livestock, making it an integral part of Ugandans’ 
diet, culture and income,’ said Hon. Hope R.
Mwesigye, Ugandan Minister of Agriculture, 
Animal Industry and Fisheries and co-author of 
Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and 
Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda. ‘The
 maps are meant to guide the government’s future 
investments to reduce poverty while strengthening
the livestock sector.’

Download the publication here.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

An early evening out to buy the day's milk at the Verka Milk Bar, in the town of Mohali, in India's Punjab (photo by ILRI/MacMillan).

Outside the Verka Milk Plant, in the town of Mohali, in India’s breadbasket state of Punjab, is the ‘Verka Milk Bar cum Fast Food Complex’. It’s more like a 'Milk Emporium', with extensive grassy gardens dotted with families eating at picnic tables and larger-than-life-size statuary celebrating milk and the many products made from it as well as a dozen different milk stalls, booths, shops and restaurants selling a wealth of milk and milk-derived products along with Kentucky fried chicken and a few other more conventional fast foods.

A large variety of milk and milk products are consumed by the people of Punjab (photo by ILRI/MacMillan).

But milk still reigns supreme here. From 6 in the morning till 10 in the evening every day, day in, day out, the human traffic walking up to the windows to buy milk in all its guises—fresh milk, curd, butter, ghee, paneer, milk shakes, milk whey, milk powder, milk sweets, salted and sugared lassis, sweetened flavoured milk drinks, ice creams—never stops.

ILRI economist Dhiraj Singh (right) purchases a box of milk sweets (photo by ILRI/MacMillan).

People here like to buy their milk products daily, to ensure the freshness of this perishable product. And buy they do. While Kenyans like to think they are big milk consumers, the Punjabis appear to put Kenyans to shame, consuming not only large quantities of dairy products on a daily basis but consuming several hundred kinds of milk-derived products.

The 'Modern Milk Bar Cum Fast Food Complex' in Mohali, Punjab (photo by ILRI/MacMillan).

The town of Mohali lies adjacent to Chandigar, a capital shared by the states of Punjab and Haryana. Bordering Pakistan to the north, into which 'the Punjab' extends, Punjab is India's richest state. It is the largest provider of the nation's wheat and has the lowest poverty rates.

One of the scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute ILRI) working in the Punjab is Dhiraj Singh, an economics student at the Centre for the Study of Rural Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi. Singh is conducting surveys on the intensification of dairy enterprises in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar as well as Punjab, and in Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa. He is conducting surveys of villagers, dairy cooperatives, private dairies, dairy vendors and district offices.

This ILRI research is funded by the OPEC Fund for International Development.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

The International Research Livestock Institute hosted the 4th meeting of the Nairobi Science and Policy Forum on Tuesday, 21 September 2010. This Forum takes advantage of a unique location of several science and policy organizations, including the United Nations Environment Programme and CGIAR Centres like ILRI that belong to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, in Nairobi. Members are building case studies and scenarios for policy briefs based on the best scientific evidence as well as networking among like-minded stakeholders to advance the objectives of the Forum.

The topic of discussion at this 4th meeting was ‘Drivers of change in crop-livestock systems and their potential impacts on agro-ecosystems services and human well-being to 2030′, presented by Mario Herrero, leader of the Sustainable Livestock Futures group at ILRI. His team is assessing the trade-offs in using environments for ecosystem services or to produce food and income. Its aim is to support and guide policies and investment strategies and to improve agricultural livelihoods and environmental resilience. This group will address issues of policies, institutions and political ecology, including gender, power relations and access to ecosystem services. It will consider drivers of change such as global trade, urbanization, climate change and energy demand.

While membership is not closed to organizations that are not based in Nairobi, a key characteristic of the Forum is that it will be a venue for face-to-face dialogue and consensus among organizations engaged in science and policymaking in the arena of agriculture and the environment. It is expected that membership will continue to evolve and increase.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

Musicians set up their equipment to begin recording at the Uthiru Roundabout, just up the road from ILRI's headquarters, in Nairobi, Kenya (photo ILRI / MacMillan).

A modest urban roundabout, perfectly sized and meticulously maintained, has become an unlikely catalyst of creativity and communion, a place to experience freedom, and, yes, happiness.

The headquarters of Nairobi’s International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), located at Kabete, near Uthiru, has been working to improve the lives of poor people in poor countries through livestock science for nearly four decades. For the most part, ILRI staff work on global livestock development issues—improved animal breeding, feeding, health and the like. But sometimes they take up opportunities to enhance human well being that are found right on their own doorstep. ILRI’s relations with its Uthiru neighbours is a recent example.

Uthiru Street Lighting
Uthiru lies a hundred metres from the entrance to ILRI’s headquarters, on Old Naivasha Road, on the other side of a roundabout. In contribution to Nairobi City Council’s work on the upkeep of public spaces, ILRI for many years has helped maintain the planted vegetation inside the roundabout as well as the grass verge between ILRI’s farm and Old Naivasha Road. In 2006, ILRI installed street lighting along almost a kilometre of public road passing along ILRI’s farm and main gate, starting from an area at the bottom of a hill that gave access to a major garbage dump and ending at the Uthiru Roundabout. The lighting greatly improved security for pedestrians in an area increasingly prone to muggings due to the growth of the dump. It was applauded by local people, one of whom published his appreciation the popular ‘Watchman’ column of Nairobi’s Daily Nation newspaper. Cries of help at night, once commonly heard by ILRI security guards, are now a thing of the past. Members of the public now regularly walk at night from the Uthiru shopping centre safely to their residences. (ILRI maintains this street lighting at its own cost.)

Uthiru Roundabout
In early 2008 ILRI management changed its gardening contractors and used the occasion to discuss with members of the Uthiru community and City Council officials ways to continue ILRI’s upkeep of the roundabout in simpler, more cost-effective, ways. At that time, this upkeep required two full-time gardeners working 5.5. days a week. The upshot of the discussions was a decision to replace bushy vegetation with easier-to-maintain grass.

This simple decision, to simplify the vegetation and its maintenance, transformed the rugged terrain of the roundabout from something of a public health hazard (used as a convenient toilet by those who had none in their homes and frequented only by young men) into something of a leisure park—a flowery, grassy lawn used by all members of the community. Families and friends now congregate daily within the park to spend quality time. The grounds also serve for amateur photography sessions, with budding musicians having lengthy videos taken as they practice their new numbers.

But weekends are by far the most popular time to visit the roundabout. It’s seen as a place to relax, a place to nap, read a book, study for an exam, meet a friend. Increasingly, it’s becoming a place for weekend weddings—booked through the church across the road. It’s a place for families and friends as well as wedding parties to get their photographs taken by professional photographers (or youths ambitious to be so). It’s a place for members of church choirs to practice on early Sunday mornings.

People come to this public space from as far away as Kiambu and the City Centre to relax in a safe, open, pleasant green space of perfect size—just large enough to allow some privacy for the different groups using it but too small for those wanting to play or watch football and other sports.

For the people of Uthiru, their roundabout has become something of a local attraction (so much so that managing the rubbish left by visitors is becoming a new maintenance issue). Many studies have shown the benefits of a clean, safe, respected public space on local self-esteem, perception and behaviour. Crime rates drop dramatically. Grades of schoolchildren go up. And ILRI’s cost? Just four hours a day of one gardener’s time. Which makes this a great (and surprisingly human) return on a very small (and surprisingly smart) investment.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

Disused water pump in Bhimpur Village, 1.5 hours' drive south of Udaipur, in Rajasthan, India (photo ILRI / MacMIllan).

Over the last five years, poor monsoons have led to crippling droughts throughout Rajasthan, India's 'Land of the Kings', which includes a hilly and rugged southeastern region and the barren northwestern Thar Desert, which extends across the border into Pakistan.

This year's monsoon, which started mid-June, is wetter than average. By mid-September, the rains had transformed Rajasthan's hills into misty verdant pastures, on which still-thin cattle and buffaloes are now fattening. Rivers are full and running fast and lake waters are high with their floodgates bursting with water. Even the camels appear thankful for the greenery the monsoon has brought. Maize is ripening in the fields and everywhere you look people are cutting the tall green grass and other fodder and loading it and carrying it home—on their heads, on their bullock carts, on the backs of their motorcycles—to feed their animals. They will dry and store the excess fodder for use when the land turns brown again.

Scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are working with others to conduct three case studies in South Asia on the use of stover and other crop 'wastes' for feeding ruminant farm animals. The residues of grain crops after harvesting are vital to animal husbandry here, where such residues typically make up more than half the feed for cattle, buffaloes, camels, goats and sheep.

The case studies are being conducted in three contrasting sites: the extensive and normally dry rangelands of Rajasthan, the modern farming sector of Haryana (part of India's breadbasket), and in the intensely cultivated fields of Bangladesh.

Braja Swain, the project associate doing all the fieldwork and analyses for this project, says that even this year's good maize harvest will feed many families only for a few months, after which they will have to buy grain using money they get from selling some animals or from family members who have migrated away to find jobs.

This project is funded by the Systemwide Livestock Programme of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research and led by the Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre. ILRI's Swain is studying for a doctoral degree in economics at the Centre for Development Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi.

Share this post:

Hide Sites

The Consortium Board of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has announced the appointment of the first Consortium Chief Executive Officer, who will lead the CGIAR in the implementation of its new business model. Mr Lloyd Le Page is currently leading the Sustainable Agriculture and Development division of Pioneer Hi-Bred, a Du Pont business. In this global role he has focused primarily on working with small farmers and improving agricultural value chains in Africa and Asia.

Chair of the Consortium Board, Carlos Perez del Castillo, said Mr Le Page had been chosen for this new position following a rigorous global recruitment process, and is ideally suited to leading the CGIAR to forge stronger and more effective partnerships and lead the implementation of the CGIAR’s new strategic, results-based research program.

“Mr Le Page will bring strong leadership and great depth of experience to the CGIAR,” Mr Perez del Castillo said. “We believe he will be able to bring new elements to the CGIAR reform program, catalyse more effective partnerships with the private sector, donors, stakeholders, farmers and the CGIAR centers, to ensure the reform process has impact on the ground.

“Most of all, he is bringing a fresh vision to the CGIAR and a great deal of commitment and enthusiasm for contributing to the success of the reform process, and ultimately, impact where it counts – in reducing poverty and hunger, improving human health and nutrition, and enhancing ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research.

“Mr Le Page has had a successful career in farming and agri-business over the last 20 years, and brings with him a great deal of partnership and practical experience at local, regional and global levels. He has designed and led a number of public-private partnerships, and has been active serving on many non-profit boards and advisory groups, including work with major donors and national governments. He has gained the trust and confidence of many of the stakeholders that make up the international agricultural research community and has been consulted by some of the CGIAR centers in the development of consortium research programs.”

After obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree, he then spent several years running farms in southern Africa. During that period, he was deeply involved in many parts of the value chain ensuring farmers’ produce reached consumers, a new facet of CGIAR reform. He then joined Du Pont business Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s leading agricultural businesses, and ran a number of successful supply operations in Africa. Eventually, he ran the supply management operations throughout Africa for Pioneer and gained experience in linking the private sector with farmers in the developing world. In 2004, Lloyd moved to Pioneer Hi-Bred’s head office in Des Moines, Iowa to establish and lead its Pioneer's sustainable development activities.

Le Page is a British citizen whose parents were missionaries in Africa, where he spent his childhood and the majority of his career. He is married with 2 children and currently lives in Des Moines, Iowa.

Read an interview with him

Share this post:

Hide Sites

Women and livestock shelter from rain in Malawi. Livestock production can empower Africa's small-scale producers (photo ILRI/Mann)

Over 100 government leaders, academicians, donors, farmers and politicians meeting in the Borlaug Symposium, a senior-level gathering of global agricultural decision makers, held in Addis Ababa this past July,  recommend that agricultural programs in Africa use linkage opportunities offered by livestock production alongside food crop farming to enhance the productivity and value addition of  Africa’s agricultural sector.

Among other recommendations, the Symposium calls for greater support to address the extension needs of pastoralists to help them develop and maintain their livestock-based systems saying that well-coordinated livestock and food crop production programs are essential if Africa is to achieve a ‘green revolution’ of its agricultural sector.

Many households in Africa largely depend on mixed farming systems that grow crops and keep livestock to meet food and income needs. Livestock play an especially important role for Africa’s pastoralist populations, most of who are dealing with the effects of climate change while relying on livestock to sustain their livelihoods. Strengthening livestock development has a direct impact on many of these pastoralist households and other smallholder households in mixed farming systems.

‘Livestock is such an important source of income, actual and potential, for smallholders that we cannot ignore ways to improve the linkages between crops and livestock,’ said Christopher Dowswell, the Executive Director – Programs, of the Sasakawa Africa Association.

The Sasakawa Africa Association is a Japan-founded group that seeks to apply green revolution principles to meet the changing needs of extension and the constraints to improving smallholder productivity in Africa. The association organized the Borlaug Symposium from 13-14 July in Ethiopia and brought together ministers of agriculture from 10 countries, academicians from African agricultural universities,representatives of bilateral donor agencies, private foundations, agribusinesses farmers and politicians. Carlos Seré the Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) attended this year's event.

The Symposium also recommends efforts to address the challenge of smallholder’s access to commercial markets to enable them to profit from agriculture by, for example, organizing them into farmer organizations or as outgrowers to larger private agribusinesses specialized in export crops.

‘The value chain examples [shared in this symposium] illustrate that there is considerable scope for smallholder farmers to capture more of the total value added, after production, than they have before,’ said Dowswell.

The meeting also highlighted the need to reach women farmers with productivity-enhancing technologies, and to incorporate them in appropriate research and extension programs while at the same time seeking to correct the disadvantaged position women in Africa face that restricts their access to land and other production resources. It also encourages greater stakeholder participation in mechanizing smallholder agriculture,  agricultural education and for more economic investment in the agricultural sector.

The Symposium was held to honour the life and achievements of Dr Norman E Borlaug, who died in September 2009 and was a co-founder of the Sasakawa Africa Association. It was attended by among others former US President Jimmy Carter who, with Dr Borlaug and Ryoichi Sasakawa, helped to establish the Sasakawa-Global 2000 program in 1985 to strengthen Africa’s agriculture. The symposium also launched the Sasakawa Fund for Extension Education in Africa and highlighted some key agricultural developments in the continent.

You can read more about the Borlaug Symposium 2010 and its recommendations at: http://saa-borlaug-symposium.org/?page_id=54.

More information about the Sasakawa African Association can be found on: http://www.saa-tokyo.org/english/

Share this post:

Hide Sites

Andrew Mude of ILRI receives the best-practice award for the Index-based Livestock Insurance project from Manfred Wiebelt, the director of PEGnet (Photo: PEGnet) 

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) led Index-based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project in northern Kenya, which provides livestock insurance to over 2000 households in Marsabit district to help livestock herders sustain their livestock-dependent livelihoods during drought, has received a best-practice award from the Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network in recognition of the project’s innovative approach of combining scientific research and practice.

The award was presented to Andrew Mude, an economist with ILRI, who also heads the Index-based Livestock Insurance project, during the Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network’s conference ‘Policies to Foster and Sustain Equitable Development in Times of Crises’ held in Midrand, South Africa, on 2-3 September 2010.

Over the past two years, ILRI in collaboration with partners from Cornell University, the BASIS I4 project at the University of California – Davis, and Syracuse University, have come up with a research program that has designed and developed the insurance program. It is now being implemented by commercial partners as a market-led index-based insurance product that is protecting livestock keepers from drought-related animal losses particularly in the drought-prone arid and semi arid areas of Kenya. The program uses satellite imagery to determine and predict potential losses of livestock forage and issue insurance payouts to participating members when incidences of drought occur.

The first pilot product of this project, launched in January 2010 in Marsabit, brings together Equity Bank of Kenya, UAP Insurance and Swiss-Re as commercial partners who are running a commercially viable insurance product. This is a first-of-its-kind initiative in Africa and it holds enormous potential for benefitting livestock keepers in the region and across the continent. So far, the project has recorded over 2000 contracts covering livestock worth over US$1 million and attracting premiums of over US$77,000.

The project is expected to bring economic and social benefits to livestock keepers and protect households against drought-induced livestock losses thereby reducing their likelihood of descending into poverty. By insuring the assets of pastoralists against catastrophic losses, members will be able to come out of poverty, be protected from the risk of falling into poverty and at the same time will have opportunity to explore other activities for household economic development.

The impact of the project is currently under assessment to find out its benefits before it can be scaled up to other districts in the country. 

The Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network brings together researchers with an interest in issues revolving around poverty, inequality and growth in developing countries and links them to German development policy bodies with the aim of among others, using research results for policy advice on pro-poor growth strategies.

More information about the Index-based Livestock Insurance project can be found on the project website: www.ilri.org/ibli/

The following ILRI news article shares information about the project’s launch in Marsabit:  http://www.ilri.org/ilrinews/index.php/archives/1440

To find out more about the Poverty Reduction, Equity, and Growth Network’s 2010 conference please visit http://www.pegnet.ifw-kiel.de/

Share this post:

Hide Sites