Tackling livestock emissions in Africa: building essential research capacity through collaboration and innovation

Idibu Joachine, a PhD candidate at Makerere University in Uganda, walked onto the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Nairobi campus for the first time in February 2024.

‘As I toured the Mazingira laboratories, I was impressed by the well-organized environment and the supportive staff. The excellent lab facilities made me excited to join the research team. I look forward to learning how to use the equipment to measure and help reduce livestock emissions,’ said Joachine.

Uganda has pledged to mitigate its national emissions by 24% by 2030.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methodology is the internationally acknowledged standard for estimating livestock emissions for national greenhouse gas inventories.

However, this methodology is based on data from the global north, which may not be ideally suited for livestock in Africa.

Joachine’s research strives to address this through measuring enteric methane emissions and testing mitigation strategies. This will help to generate data from local cattle to make more informed decisions.

That’s where the support from the New Zealand government comes in. It provided funding to establish ILRI’s Mazingira Centre as the East African Measurement Hub to improve local capacity for livestock emission measurements and mitigation.

Through the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), this funding supports two PhD students: Idibu Joachine from Makerere University and Gaius Vihowanou from the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin.

Photo credit: Cow in Ubiri village, Lushoto, Tanzania (ILRI/Nils Teufel)