The Boma

At more than 50 million animals, Ethiopia's livestock population is the largest in Africa and the eighth largest in the world. But livestock productivity in Ethiopia remains low. Namukolo Covic, the ILRI Director General's representative to Ethiopia, CGIAR Ethiopia country convener and the CGIAR regional director for Eastern and Southern Africa, talks with Shahida Hussein, an ILRI commun...

Across the world, millions of people eat a 'hidden meat' - bushmeat, or wild meat. But handling or eating bushmeat can pose a higher risk of transmitting zoonotic disease - diseases which affect both animals and humans. This episode looks at a pioneering study led by scientist Ekta Patel of ILRI that investigates how people understand that risk - and whether that understanding changes ea...

Is there a conflict between supporting animal welfare, and supporting the wellbeing of the world's poor? Can we talk about animal welfare in the same way in the global North and South? Or are there important moral distinctions to be made?  To explore these questions we're joined by Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher and bioethicist, Rebecca Doyle, who leads ILRI’s efforts on animal...

In the second of our episodes featuring writer Roger Thurow, we hear about what inspired his most recent book, 'The First 1000 Days'. What exactly is this crucial period of life - and what is its impact on the rest of a child's life? Malnutrition is a terrible burden to bear, but as Thurow warns, it ultimately affects us all. Further reading and listening: Roger Thurow | The Chicago...

Roger Thurow is a senior fellow for global agriculture and food policy for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He writes about many of the same issues that animate the work at the International Livestock Research Institute - nutrition, development, hunger, and aid for subsistence farmers. As a writer, Thurow conveys what the lives of the poor are like in vivid, granular detail. We hear from him...

Where does digital technology fit in with livestock farming? Can flying animal vaccines in by drone to remote regions help address gender inequality? Find out on this special episode of The Boma! In this podcast, we hear about the barriers to digital technology and farming difficulties that women face, then follow how ILRI and the CGIAR are working to close that divide from the example of an innov...

 Every director general knows, at the time they are appointed, exactly when they're supposed to leave because their appointment letter tells them so, says Jimmy Smith, who has been the director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) for the past 11 years. But "I didn't realise how difficult it would be to say goodbye to ILRI and the staff." In this spe...

" You guys are coming when we have really suffered, when we have lost half of our herd and also when the vultures are descending from the sky." So said a Kenyan pastoralist at a meeting about drought response.  What is being done to anticipate drought, rather than to deal with the consequences?  In this episode we look at the effects of the ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa, with 17...

In 2014 a survey found that a quarter of children under 5 in Siaya County, western Kenya, were stunted. Stunting creates lifelong, chronic health issues and worse mental development. Better nutrition can help avoid stunting, but can be a struggle for families that are already lacking money, resources and access to support. What if there was a way to empower families by improving a simple resource...

Droughts have always occurred in the Horn of Africa, but in the past few years they have begun happening much more frequently.  An award-winning scheme of index-based livestock insurance could provide a lifeline for millions of pastoralists whose livelihoods are affected by drought. There is no need to wait for a drought to become severe, for animals to die, or people to starve. Instead this schem...

Many countries locked down in the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic, trying to protect the public from infections and illness. But a new wave of research is examining how containment measures came with costs, too. Particularly for the 1 in 12 people in the world who are also smallholder farmers, responsible for producing most of the food in low- or middle-income countries. Brenda Coromina and Elliot Ca...

"I’ve learned that using the simplest words doesn’t make you less of a scientist. It can actually make you a great scientist." Sarah Nyanchera Nyakeri is an MSc fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute where she is researching the development of a better vaccine for contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP). She is also the winner of the recent ILRI CapDev challenge which...

In the early 1900s, cattle herds across South Africa were devastated by a new livestock disease. Today, more than 100 years later, that disease is called East Coast fever, and despite scientists' best efforts to control it, the disease continues to devastate cattle and livelihoods across the dozen African countries where it is endemic.  In this episode, presenters Elliot Carleton and Brenda C...

Little is known about how bacteria spread through different sections of a city. Now the most extensive study of its kind uncovers some critical answers of how bacteria move through Nairobi, lessons that could have implications for the wider world. After all, what is being seen in Nairobi today could easily be in New York or Paris by tomorrow morning. Presenters Elliot Carleton and Brenda Coromina...

If you're not a researcher, why should you care about science? Why does science communication matter to research? In the second of a two-parter featuring ILRI Emeritus Fellow Susan MacMillan, Brenda Coromina and Elliot Carleton question what the difference is between science communication, and science advocacy, finding out how the International Livestock Research Institute's (ILRI) commu...

Susan MacMillan knows why livestock matter. An ILRI Emeritus Fellow, she has led public awareness and advocacy communications at ILRI for nearly 33 years. In the latest episode of The Boma, Elliot Carleton and Brenda Coromina find out how Susan went from being an Ohio native who had never even glimpsed a living cow, to becoming one of the most passionate advocates for livestock farming in developi...

Livestock provide vital nutrition and income for numerous households in developing countries. And it's often women who do the bulk of the work caring for the animals. But this doesn't mean they reap the benefits. In many communities, women are excluded from making management decisions about livestock, like when to sell them, or how to treat them. They also don't get to control the i...

There's a growing problem across the world, one that could make keeping livestock outdoors almost impossible in just a few decades, and jeopardize the health and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.  That problem is heat stress, caused by rising temperatures and global warming. It's a serious problem which is already affecting livestock health and welfare, particularly in outdo...

As long as we have had ways to destroy microbes, microbes have been fighting back. Alexander Fleming, who discovered the world's first antibiotic, penicillin, warned that misusing antibiotics could lead to antimicrobial resistance (AMR).  He was right. Today AMR can be found worldwide and is a serious problem. If it is not tackled now, by 2050 one person will die every three seconds because o...

Livestock farmers use antibiotics to treat infections in their animals, and may also use them as a preventative. But overuse of antibiotics can create 'superbugs' - antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacteria which threaten human lives and wellbeing, as well as those of livestock animals. Presenters Brenda Coromina and Elliot Carleton explore one approach that ILRI scientists are taking to co...

As the pandemic pushes global malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, how can livestock products like milk, meat and eggs help? And how do we weigh the nutritional benefits of livestock, particularly in the developing world, against the fact that livestock can be a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions? In this episode of The Boma, presenters Brenda Coromina and Elliot Carle...

If sub-Saharan Africa produces just 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the livestock sector just a fraction of those, why should the governments of these countries be concerned? Because there's much more to the story. The intensity of the emissions is higher in these countries than in others, and the livestock sector is growing in size every year. In the second part of a mini-series o...

How do we intensify livestock to feed the global south, but also mitigate climate emissions? Is it possible to increase livestock productivity while decreasing its environmental cost? Tim Offei-Addo returns to the Boma to talk to three ILRI  researchers - Esther Kihoro , Todd Crane and Renee Bullock - who want the world to know that to begin to answer that question we must first understand the peo...

One Health is traditionally defined as the collaboration of several disciplines working locally, nationally and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals, and the environment -- but what exactly does this mean, and what does it look like in practice?  Today’s episode of The Boma features food expert Hung Nguyen , co-leader of the Animal and Human Health Program at ILRI. Hung takes us t...

Covid-19 has had the world at a stand-still since early last year and yet we are still trying to find out how the pandemic started. Did the virus come directly from a bat, a different wild animal, was it spread by frozen food, or was it even leaked from a lab?  A report published at the end of March by the World Health Organization and a joint team of scientists begins to unravel the mystery of th...