In West Africa, ILRI has offices in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Nigeria with the office in Senegal serving as the regional hub.
For this region, ILRI’s major objectives are:
- To sustainably intensify smallholder crop-livestock production systems through innovative livestock practices thereby improving productivity, food security and nutrition.
- To enhance resilience of livestock production systems to better adapt to climate change and variability and improve market participation by smallholder livestock producers.
To address these objectives, the priority research areas identified for the region are:
- Closing the livestock productivity gap through sustainable intensification of mixed crop-livestock systems.
- Enhancing the consumption of animal source foods and food safety.
- Livestock value chain development and better market access for smallholder producers.
- Evolution of livestock systems and assessment of natural resource base. This includes analysis of pastoral and agro-pastoral systems in West Africa Sahel with focus on technical, social and institutional aspects like conflict management, natural resource governance, analysis of local conventions governing natural resource management, transhumance and enhancing the value of ecosystems services in pastoral systems.
- Building resilient livestock systems in response to climate change. This entails adapting livestock production systems to climate change and climate smart livestock interventions that enhance adaptation to climate change, and to reduce vulnerability of smallholder farmers to climate change and variability.