A good week for team RIU

May 2011

It's been a good week for team RIU with high-level recognition for our work coming from two very different directions.

A Tale of Two Cities...

April 2011

The RIU programme began in July 2006 and is scheduled to run for five years. So, the RIU team meeting held in Nairobi in mid-March was probably the last time the whole team will be together.

Banking on success

2 March 2011

In a few days time we shall be holding the latest in our regular series of RIU team meetings.

As well as looking forward we will spend time looking back, with a special focus on identifying the impact the different parts of the RIU programme have achieved. We will also be seeking to clarify the critical factors which led to different levels, scales and types of impact.

Foresight

1 February 2011

Over the past few weeks two major studies have been published which are highly relevant to RIU's mission.

The first is Calestous Juma's (Harvard Professor of the Practice of International Development) new book The New Harvest: Agricultural Innovation in Africa; the second a major UK government-commissioned study into food security, The Foresight Report on Food and Farming Futures.

Is small beautiful or bigger better?

5 January 2011

Recently I have been thinking about the issue of scale.

In his 1973 collection of essays, Small is beautiful, the British economist E F Schumacher found fault with conventional economic thinking for, amongst other things, failing to consider the most appropriate scale for an activity.

Smart lesson sharing tactics

1 December 2010

As we approach the final few months of the scheduled five-year RIU programme a priority activity is to share our emerging lessons and experiences.

Aspirins or vitamins?

4 November 2010

Around this time last year we launched the RIU Best Bets initiative. The idea was to identify private sector-led alliances which could put existing agricultural research into use in Africa.

'Come out and Play’ - it’s World Food Day

14 October 2010

The Commonwealth Games ended today. In an adroit piece of public relations, Save the Children, an international NGO, released a report timed to coincide with the Games titled Commonwealth or Common Hunger. Thomas Chandy, CEO of Save the Children India observed that:

Urbanization and the smallholder farmer in Africa

5 October 2010

I have read two articles recently which inter-relate. Firstly, an article in The Spectator by Doug Sanders on urbanization; secondly, an article in The Economist on Brazilian agriculture.

The MDG summit

23 September 2010

Ten years ago, as the world's 'haves' celebrated the arrival of the new millennium, the international community set itself a series of ambitious anti-poverty targets, which came to be known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Ten years on, the world's leaders met this week at the UN in New York to review progress. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the summit that although "real results" has been achieved "the clock is ticking, with much more to do."