An
International Workshop
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[ DRAFT Workshop Proceedings ] |
Case Study:
Information Dissemination Challenges facing the International Livestock Research Institute
Dr. P. Kristjanson,
Senior Agricultural Economist
Global Project Leader: Poverty, Sustainable Livelihoods & Livestock
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development for poor livestock keepers and their communities. ILRI works in the tropical developing regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, with offices in East and West Africa, South and Southeast Asia, China and Central America, and projects in Southern Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. ILRI is a non-profit-making and non-governmental organisation with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and a second principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with over 700 staff from over 40 countries.
ILRI's annual expenditures of roughly $30 million are funded by more than 60 private, public and government organisations of the North and South. Some donors support ILRI with core and programme funds whereas other finance individual research projects. In-kind support from national partners such as Kenya, Ethiopia and the Philippines, as well as that from international collaborators, is substantial and vital. This mix of generic, specific and in-kind resources is essential for the partnership research we conduct.
All ILRI work is conducted in extensive and strategic partnerships that facilitate and add value to the contribution of many other players in livestock for development work. ILRI is adopting an innovative systems approach as a powerful tool to enhance the effectiveness of its research in contributing to actual innovations reaching the poor. This approach leads to the acknowledgement of the key roles of diverse and powerful partnerships with a range of stakeholders involved in the research development continuum. Generation, sharing, and widespread dissemination of new information and knowledge, contributing to our mandate to provide 'international public goods', within these broad partnerships, are key to ILRI's success, providing a huge challenge.
In this presentation,
I discuss ILRI's approach to disseminating and facilitating the dissemination
of data and information, and some of the challenges we face in doing so
with the institutions and partners we typically deal with. Examples discussed
include recent collaborative poverty-related research we have undertaken
in East Africa and a new initiative to establish a strategic analysis
and knowledge support system that will allow institutions throughout Africa
to share - for the first time - their statistical, spatial, and analytical
tools and information on poverty and sustainable rural development.