Lilian milking dairy cow

World Milk Day 2026 | Celebrating the women who produce Africa's and Asia’s milk

ILRI Event

On World Milk Day 2026, ILRI celebrates the women at the heart of dairy in Africa and Asia and the research that puts better tools in their hands.

Every morning, long before markets open, women across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are already at work. They are milking cows and buffaloes, carrying feed, tending calves, and walking milk along roads that flood in the wet season and crack open in the dry one.

In Africa, an estimated 230 million women keep livestock. In Asia, 71 percent of women work in agrifood systems, a higher share than men. In the dairy sector, women provide most of the daily farm labour: the feeding, the milking, the cleaning, the calf care. Ownership of animals, control of income, and recognition in production statistics tell a different story. Research from India, Nepal, and across South Asia shows a persistent pattern: as dairy becomes more commercial and more profitable, women are more likely to lose control of management and earnings, not gain it.

On World Milk Day 2026, ILRI celebrates the women who produce Africa's and Asia's milk and the science that works to make their labour count more fairly.

For more than five decades, ILRI has generated research that makes smallholder dairy more productive, more climate-resilient, and more equitable. That means breeding cows and buffaloes that give more milk with less methane. It means improving animal health to lower methane emissions per unit of milk. It means training women traders to run safer, more profitable businesses. It means developing forages that sustain herds when the rains fail and building markets where women farmers can compete and earn fairly.

India was a net dairy importer only 20 years ago. Today, it is the world's largest milk producer. That shift shows what is possible when smallholder farmers get sustained investment and support. Africa carries the same potential. 

Africa's demand for dairy will grow 80 percent by 2030. That demand will not be met by imports. It will be met by the women already doing the work. The science is ready. What is needed now is speed, and the will to put women at the centre of what comes next.

Key Messages

Smallholder dairy animals across Africa and Asia produce a fraction of their potential. In Tanzania, a local-breed cow yields around 400 litres of milk per lactation. A well-matched crossbred reaches 1,400. In Nepal, indigenous buffalo average less than 900 litres per lactation where improved Murrah crosses reach 1,500. ILRI's Africa-Asia Dairy Genetic Gains programme works across both regions to close that gap, getting better genetics to the smallholder farms where the difference means a child in school, not out of it.

Dairy cattle in sub-Saharan Africa emit 8.7 times more methane per litre of milk than cattle in North America or western Europe. In South Asia, the figure is four times as high. The reason is low productivity, not large herds. A more productive animal converts feed more efficiently and emits less methane per litre produced. ILRI's work on breeding, animal health, improved forages, and feed efficiency across Africa and Asia show that closing the productivity gap is one of the most direct climate interventions available to both regions.

Heat and erratic rains are already cutting milk yields across East Africa and South Asia. Women dairy farmers, with less land, less credit, and fewer backup options, bear the heaviest cost when a herd dries up or animals fall sick in a hot season. ILRI is developing heat-tolerant breeds, drought-adapted forages, and climate-smart management tools for smallholder systems across both regions through its Livestock and Climate Solutions Hub.

In Kenya, milk generates over 30 percent of smallholder household income, and it does so daily. In India, most milk comes from farmers with two or three animals, and the daily care of those animals falls largely on women. That daily income stream is what covers a medical bill without borrowing and keeps children enrolled through a difficult season. 

From Kenya's roadside milk bars to India's village cooperatives, women are present at every point in the dairy chain. They milk, they process, they sell. Yet ownership, profit and decision-making, thin out the further up the chain you go. ILRI's research across Africa and Asia works to change where women stand in that chain, not just how hard they work in it.

Meet the researchers

Silvia Alonso Alvarez

Silvia Alonso Alvarez

Senior Scientist Epidemiologist

Raphael Mrode

Raphael Mrode

Principal Scientist

Florence Mutua

Florence Mutua

Senior Scientist -Epidemiology

Julie Ojango

Julie Ojango

Senior Scientist, Animal Genetic Resource Utilization and Management

Chinyere Ekine-Dzivenu

Chinyere Ekine-Dzivenu

Scientist, Statistical Genetics, Genomics

Alessandra Galiè

Alessandra Galiè

Team leader: Gender

Ben Lukuyu

Ben Lukuyu

Senior Scientist, Animal Nutrition

Elizaphan James Oburu Rao

Elizaphan James Oburu Rao

Senior Scientis - Agricultural Economist

Padmakumar Varijakshapanicker

Padmakumar Varijakshapanicker

Senior research management coordinator and Country representative Nepal