24 and 25 August 2010. Addis Ababa. CGIAR Livestock Fish Mega Program stakeholder consultation meeting.
Steve Hall, Director General of the WorldFish Centre reflects on the CGIAR Livestock Fish Mega Program stakeholder meeting. Reflecting on the role of the emerging CGIAR, Steve Hall, Director General of the WorldFish Centre outlines three ‘BBC’ roles that the CGIAR needs to take on. These are: ‘Bridging’ really good research into action; ‘Brokering’ the relationships needed for our research to really be applied and taken up; and ‘Catalyzing’ the changes that are needed, through advocacy and dialogue. These are the important roles, “much more than just doing science at the front end.”
Value chain focus of Livestock and Fish Mega Program provides opportunity for future impact. CIAT’s Brigitte Maass found the discussions to be a “wonderful opportunity to open an avenue for future research” with different partners. In terms of the Mega Program proposal, she foresees that focus on value chains will allow the partners to get away from a “very limited focus on a particular technique or technology but rather really the larger integration along a value chain.”
Tom Randolph from ILRI introduces the essential features of the proposed CGIAR Livestock Fish Mega Program. The new elements for the CGIAR are basically the ways the Centers work with partners and how they focus their research. "Instead of doing our work everywhere, in bits and pieces, we are trying to focus it now into a few selected value chains in a few selected countries around the world, and we are going to commit to transforming those value chains and to work with development partners in large scale interventions as the research knowledge partner, in real time, helping them to have impact on a large number of smallholders, producing a greater amount of animal source foods for poor consumers."
Pour N'Guetta Bosso, du Bureau Interafricain des ressources animales (UA/BIRA), présent à la récente consultation sur le méga programme élevage et pêche du GCRAI tenue à Addis Abeba les 24 et 25 août 2010, le programme aura un impact visible s’il implique les populations bénéficiaires et que les barrières, c’est-à-dire les politiques mises en place, l’accès au marché, la diffusion des technologies et les questions de genre, soient levées.
David Nyagaka from Novus International argued that the private sector has an important role to play: Once it gets hold of technologies, it can convert them into something tangible which the farmers would be able to use. However, care is needed in approaching the private sector.
World Bank consultant Cees de Haan reflects on the proposed CGIAR Livestock Fish Mega Program. What he found new in this workshop is the whole emphasis on the value chain, the focus on marketing and processing for what the consumers want; in the past, the focus of CGIAR research was more on production systems. He suggests that the main challenge will be to extrapolate results from a single value chain to larger universes and audiences.
