On 26 January 2012, Kara Brown travelled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to begin a 10-week internship with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) Knowledge Management & Information Services (KMIS). Here she reflects on her days in Addis Ababa – the ideas were initially shared with ILRI colleagues on 30 March 2012. It was my very … Continue reading
Effectively communicating research for development is a crucial challenge for everyone in the CGIAR. Sometimes, having an external view about one’s own issues frees up some ideas and can help turn challenges into opportunities. It was in this spirit that the Knowledge Management and Information Services team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) supported … Continue reading
The Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) team at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently facilitated a regional workshop on ‘Research design for Mechanization Entrepreneurship to Leverage Sustainable Intensification in Rainfed Areas of Eastern and Southern Africa (MELISA)‘. From 10 to 13 April, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) organized this workshop … Continue reading
Knowledge, information, communication – these are three assets that any research organization has to take care of. But what does work in this are actually look like, and what does it contribute to an organization like ILRI – the International Livestock Research Institute? For a recent ILRI Board meeting, we provided an update on our … Continue reading
Yesterday, Judy Payne (USAID e-Business Advisor) and Amol Jadhav (GSMA Development Fund) convened an informal meeting of people in Addis Ababa with an interest in information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agriculture. The aim was to share ongoing United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and GSMA (the trade association for mobile industries) Development Fund … Continue reading
The World Bank recently published an ‘ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook‘ Module 6 ‘ICTs as enablers of agricultural innovation systems’ was co-authored by ILRI’s Peter Ballantyne. The module introduces ICT developments in the wider innovation and knowledge systems; it also explores drivers of ICT use in research and extension. A section on ‘ICT in the Agricultural … Continue reading
One year ago, in February 2011, project staff from 10 Agriculture Water Management projects got together in a mini ‘share fair’ to share their objectives, intended outcomes, products, timelines, stakeholders and geographical focus. One of the ‘hot’ discussion topics was communication … more specifically how to sustain interest and investment over time. Participants were concerned … Continue reading
In the past few years we (‘comms’ people across ILRI) have streamlined our communication workflows and adopted a broader set of external communication platforms and tools. In case you are interested, here are some basic numbers associated with the various services we run. In 2011, these were collectively viewed just over 8 million times; in … Continue reading
In late 2009, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) began work on an institutional repository using Dspace software. Under the name ‘mahider’ (http://mahider.ilri.org), we intended this repository to be a complete index of all ILRI research products/outputs; with ‘full’ content as often as possible (we struggle to get full versions of articles and other products … Continue reading
On 6, 7 and 8 December, staff of Knowledge Management and Information Services (KMIS) at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) provided facilitation and reporting support to a Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) workshop titled ‘Developing climate-smart crops for 2030 world’. It took place on the ILRI Ethiopia campus in Addis Ababa. The … Continue reading
Maarifa - Communications and Knowledge Management 