Some visitors to our site may be aware that Mike Larcombe is currently in Africa on Long Service Leave.  What you might not be aware of is exactly what he is up to over there. 

Mike is actually spending a fair bit of his time in Africa working with the International Livestock Research Institute.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) works at the crossroads of livestock and poverty, bringing high-quality science and capacity-building to bear on poverty reduction and sustainable development. ILRI works in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with offices in East and West Africa, South and Southeast Asia, China and Central America.

ILRI is a non-profit-making and non-governmental organization with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, and a second principal campus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  They are guided by a board of trustees comprising 12 leading professionals in relevant research, development and management issues. The Institute is supported by the CGIAR, an association of more than 60 governments and public- and private-sector institutions supporting a network of 15 agricultural research centres working to reduce poverty, hunger and environmental degradation in developing countries. The co-sponsors of the CGIAR are the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Mike is working with the Kenyan Livestock Breeders Association to develop a viable model for herd recording in Kenya,  and hopefully use this model as a template that might be able to rolled out to other developing countries.

In this section you can read some of Mike's letters, and find out a little more about what life and dairy farming are like in Africa.