The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works with partners worldwide to enhance livestock pathways out of poverty, principally in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. The products of these research partnerships help people in developing countries keep their farm animals alive and productive, increase and sustain their livestock and farm productivity, find profitable markets for their animal products, and reduce their risk to livestock-related diseases.
ILRI is a non-profit institution with a staff of about 700 and an operating budget of over US$55 million. It has its headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, a principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and offices in West and southern Africa and in South, Southeast and East Asia.
In the developing world, livestock are the fastest-growing part of agriculture. Due to population growth and other drivers of change, many of the developing world’s livestock systems are transforming as fast as they are growing. Livestock science helps the world’s 1 billion small-scale livestock keepers make better and more sustainable use of the big changes and new trends.
To increase global food supplies by as much as 70 per cent in the next 40 years without depleting natural resources, options are needed to support the world’s vast array of smallholder food producers, particularly small-scale ‘mixed’ crop-and-livestock farmers, who are the mainstay of the world’s food production and are likely to remain so for generations to come, and livestock herders, who move their animals periodically to find new pastures, and who are among the world’s most vulnerable people.
ILRI is organized in three major research themes and a regional Biosciences eastern and central Africa Hub. Cross-cutting gender and systems research as well as communications, knowledge management, capacity development and partnership programs support these research themes. ILRI leads the CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish, leads a component of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health on the prevention and control of agriculture-associated diseases, and contributes to five other CGIAR Research Programs.
ILRI’s Biotechnology Research Theme works to improve animal health by developing more appropriate tests to diagnose tropical livestock diseases and improved ways of controlling these diseases, including novel vaccines. This research theme also works to identify livestock genes controlling disease resistance and other useful traits and to develop appropriate genetic markers for delivering optimal livestock genes and breeds for different smallholder regions and circumstances.
ILRI’s Markets, Gender and Livelihoods Theme works to improve access by small-scale livestock keepers to livestock markets, which are growing rapidly in the developing world as consumer demand for meat, milk and eggs increases. This research spans the livestock supply chain from production, procurement, distribution and processing to sales and consumption.
ILRI’s People, Livestock and the Environment Theme develops livestock-based strategies for helping the poor adapt to, and mitigate, climate change, such as more efficient livestock feeding systems that both increase productivity and reduce greenhouse gases. The theme also works to enhance pastoral livelihoods and resilience and manages a genebank conserving native African forages.
