Podcast on Maize and Chicken in Ethiopia

“Wow, we learned more about chicken than we ever asked for…” my colleague David Spielman joked after a week of Net-Mapping poultry and maize innovation systems in Ethiopia. You can listen to the (more serious) rest of the discussion by clicking on the media player below (or here) . The project is still in [...]

Marathon Chicken up-date

I sent my musings about Marathon Chicken Support to my colleague David Spielman in Ethiopia and he assures me that our colleagues at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) do demand oriented research. He writes:
“Yes, ILRI is actually working to improve local poultry breeds, rather than introducing exotic breeds. Dr. Azage Tegegne with ILRI’s Improving [...]

Marathon Chicken vs Whitebreasts

In Ethiopia people don’t care much for huge, tender, tasteless industrial style chicken. Everybody, from farmer to university researcher agreed: For good Ethiopian food you need tough and streetwise Ethiopian chicken. This poses a big challenge to the development of the commercial poultry sector: While there is a big market for eggs, farmers and extensionists [...]

Do we really need to draw all these links?

When we were net-mapping the innovation systems in poultry and maize in Ethiopia, we wondered: What is the benefit of spending so much time, drawing different links and is it maybe enough to just name the actors and put them on influence towers? So we tried a two step approach: With the first interview partner, [...]

Jumping into cold water

As I mentionned before, I’m in Addis Ababa now, to use Net-Map with my colleagues here to get a better understanding of innovation systems in the agricultural sector. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea about the poultry sector in Ethiopia.
To structure and fine-tune our research approach, we drew our first Net-Map [...]

Listen to this!

I can’t hide how excited I am: This blog is going audio!
Go to the case study section, click on pod-cast and let me tell you how I developed Net-Map to tackle the challenges that the White Volta Basin Board faces.

Food Safety in the Dairy Supply Chain in Uzbekistan

or: Net-map Uzbek Style
By Ekin Birol and Marites Tiongco
We have just come back from Uzbekistan where we participated in a World Bank (WB) and World Health Organisation (WHO) funded research study on safety of food in Uzbekistan. As Eva said in her previous blog entry, we used the Net-Map tool in two different ways: [...]

Fresh from Uzbekistan

My colleagues Ekin Birol and Marites Ticogo are back from their research trip to Uzbekistan, where they used Net-Map for a study about food safety. They promised to tell me all about it and to write up their experience when using Net-Map in two different ways: As interview tool on the farm level and to [...]

The Role of Networks in Innovation Systems

My colleagues at the ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research) Division of IFPRI have done a lot of research into the role of networks in agricultural innovation systems in such diverse settings as Bolivia and Ethiopia. So I’m excited that David Spielman (ISNAR) and Regina Birner (also IFPRI, Development Strategy Division DSG) asked [...]

New Case Study Online: African Peer Review Mechanism Process

“It’s a very important tool, from the way we came out with the members. I was picturing how I was going to form this committee all alone, there was a big question mark as to who to choose, but through this method I have seen that certain groups are inevitable, looking at the coordination. The [...]