I challenge us to connect

• ILRI’s regional and country teams have an equally important role to play in implementing ILRI’s research as do the those based in the HQs in Addis and Nairobi. The colleagues based in the regions help to ensure that impact pathways are realised in local and regional contexts as well as contributing to global public goods. If such roles are to be fully realised, ILRI will need to strengthen its presence in the regions, most likely through a combination of basing more staff in the regions and resource mobilisation specific to regional programs. Regions are key for developing, testing and taking to scale ILRI’s research outputs – so we need good programmatic and regional integration – and IPM is a chance to begin some conversations on that (as well as taking the existing ones further!). Moreover, regions are also increasingly presenting resource mobilization opportunities as donors decentralise, and ILRI can be part of this if real livestock research based solutions are evident.

  So it’s been good to see some of the colleagues based outside of Ethiopia and Kenya joining in the discussions today and I think it’s a key opportunity of this IPM to get ILRI well-connected across its many locations. For the more than 120 ILRI staff (yes that is right – 122 at my last count!) who are not based in Ethiopia or Kenya, please join in and really help to bring the perspectives from where you sit to these fascinating discussions. This is important – not least because you are the colleagues for whom coming to an IPM often means so much, in terms of getting to know the institute and people better – so let’s use this virtual platform to ensure that this one means just as much and helps everyone get to engage in the research agenda right across ILRI’s global portfolio.

  We’ve seen several threads of discussion about connecting the research topics – let me challenge us (me included) to also use the opportunity to connect ILRI’s excellent science and scientists in ALL locations!

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