ILRI and TotoGEO
Some ‘big ideas’ and areas for potential collaboration
Iddo Dror
Head of Capacity Development, ILRI
Meeting on Leveraging TOTOGEO and Partnerships
INSEAD, Singapore, 16 February 2015

Overview – we came here today to discuss:
How can ILRI and TotoGEO work closer together?
What are some related ‘big ideas’ we may wish to explore?

ILRI and TotoGeo
• What are the
challenges of getting
ILRI livestock content
into totoGEO?
• Can we make ILRI a
TotoGEO champion for
livestock?
• What can we do about
it?

Some related ‘big ideas’ – what could the next
ICT4Ag breakthrough project?
• Livestock Insurance?
• Mobile phone-based diagnostics?
• Mobile Data Systems for
Sustainable Livestock Genetic?
• Leveraging Technology to Match
Research Priorities to Farmer
Needs?

Livestock Insurance Contract Design Tools and
Related Training Packages
• Index Based Livestock Insurance
(IBLI) - operating since 2010,
about to be scaled up
considerably with a World Bank
/ Government of Kenya
program.
• A number of opportunities to
enhance the program:
– Convert an existing tool to web-
based platform with automation
functionalities
– Design of mobile-apps
– Localization to local languages
– Etc.

Mobile phone-based diagnostics for better
Disease Control and increased Food Safety*
• Novel DNA based diagnostic
methods for livestock diseases
• Inexpensive (<US$ 0.5), self-
loading and disposable silicone
“cartridge” is envisaged to be
enabled by a smartphone and a
smartphone powered, data
collection and transmission over
phone/ wireless networks.
• Opportunities for collaboration
on contextualization, technical
training and scaling up adoption
* This project is led by University of Wisconsin / Prof. Douglas Weibel in collaboration with ILRI

Small Holder Dairy Data Systems for
Sustainable Genetic Selection Programs
• Genetics a major driver of livestock
productivity, and genetic
improvement is largely dependent
upon the availability of
performance data. In Africa,
production data is almost entirely
absent.
• New project to create mobile data
platforms to skip a generation of
data collection technology by
providing dairy farmers with highly
tailored information and
management systems

Leveraging Technology to Match Research
Priorities to Farmer Needs.
• Extension knowledge in developing countries is not digitized and
remains ephemeral.
• Farmers’ knowledge is rich but still largely inaccessible to donors,
policy makers and academics.
• Mandates of agricultural research institutes are often global and
research outputs remain often untargeted.
• Build an open API to enable a
better communication system
• Mobile apps & targeted
interventions for communities,
policymakers and other
stakeholders

The presentation has a Creative Commons licence. You are free to re-use or distribute this work, provided credit is given to ILRI.
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