For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Tim Williams – Africa Director at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) reflects on ILRI’s livestock work in West Africa …

Two key questions
Back in 2000, two key questions occupied the minds of those of us who worked on the development of the ILRI’s Strategy–Livestock: A Pathway out of Poverty—Where are the poor livestock producers located and how can livestock research be applied to lift them out of poverty in an environmentally sustainable way? Ten years on, it is pertinent to review how ILRI has dealt with these two questions.

While the institute satisfactorily answered the first question, dealing with the second question remains a work in progress. To be sure, notable achievements have been recorded in linking livestock producers, particularly dairy producers to markets, in improving crop-livestock integration to increase food output and enhance soil fertility and…