5. Food Security and Capacity Development: The ILRI Experience

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), a CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) Research Center is headquartered in Kenya. It has sixteen country offices across Africa and Asia. Since its inception in the 1970s, it has been engaging in South-South collaboration projects with different organizations across India and several African countries. Through these projects and initiatives, the ILRI has participated in the coordination, management and execution of various activities with the aim of equipping farmers with the skills and tools needed to improve their livelihoods, better their nutritional and environmental situations, and provide ‘better lives through livestock’. Over the years, India has frequently been the setting of different projects in which the ILRI played an active role alongside other Indian and global partners. Although the nature of these projects varied in range from development of prototype tools, value chains, genetic research, etc., their goal remained unchanged—to help vulnerable members of society build better lives for themselves and their families by assisting them in developing new skills, introducing them to new approaches and techniques and providing them with innovative resources to implement in their daily lives. This paper provides a summary of six different projects that involved India-Africa collaboration highlighting key initiatives and lessons learnt, while also discussing how these can help inform further initiatives with regard to the design and implementation of successful South-South collaborations.