This project aims to improve dairy productivity in Ethiopia and Tanzania through genetic gains and farmer support services. It will establish performance recording centers to select superior dairy cows and bulls. These will be used in artificial insemination and natural mating programs to demonstrate genetic improvement. The project also aims to provide farmer information and management support services to 59,000 farmers, and potentially one million farmers. It involves partnerships between ILRI, universities, and companies to deliver these services sustainably and scale them up through private sector involvement over time.

1. African Dairy Genetic Gains Program:
Innovative private-public partnership
for sustainable dairy productivity
Okeyo Mwai
o.mwai@cgiar.org ● Box 30709 Nairobi Kenya ● +254 20 422 3000
Nairobi, Kenya ● ilri.org
This project was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
This poster is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (March 2016)
March 2016
Expected outcomes
 Dairy farmer recording and information centres operating
and reaching 12,000 farmers in Ethiopia and Tanzania
 Genetic improvement programs through natural mating and
AI demonstrated
 Farmer information and management support services
reaching 59,000 farmers in Ethiopia and Tanzania,
expandable to one million farmers
The development challenge
 Shortages of productive and adapted dairy cows for existing
production systems
 Dairy farmers have limited information and knowledge to inform
and support sustainable productivity improvement
 Input and market services for dairy production are inadequate
 No reliable information on crossbred or improved bulls for genetic
improvement of existing dairy animals
Partners and how the work will be done
UNE
Green
Dreams
Tech. (iCow)
NAIC-Ethiopia
NAIC-Tanzania
ILRILO’L
(PAID)
NARES-ET
NARES-TZ
The ADGG platform will
• Establish national performance recording and sampling systems in
Ethiopia and Tanzania
• Use information generated and samples to develop systems to
select crossbred bulls and cows of superior genetic merit for
artificial insemination and natural mating
• Pilot farmer-feedback systems to support management decisions
and improve productivity
• Develop public-private partnerships with a clear route to long-term
sustainability
The interventions
Partnerships
Project activities synergized to BMGF investment in a private-public
partnership for Artificial Insemination Delivery (PAID)—led by Land
O’Lakes International Development—which will scale-out artificial
insemination delivery and heifer multiplication in Ethiopia and
Tanzania. This partnership will also work with multinational and
local dairy genetics companies to:
• Build capacity for financially sustainable, doorstep delivery of
reliable artificial insemination services, and transition them into
local franchises of the partner genetics companies.
• Support, incentivize and monitor the performance of the
technicians to train farmers and deliver to them ~2.5 million
artificial insemination services.
• Leverage expertise of the private companies to enable national
artificial insemination centres to produce crossbred semen and
digitally track field practice of artificial insemination.
Data Analytics
System (DPRC)
Data Base
Raw Data
Farmers
Service
providers
Others
Data Base
Analysed
data:
Farmers
Topic
Location
Commodity
Data Analysis System
Productivity
Time
The conceptual framework
Improved/certified bulls/
heifersDigital information
capture, farmer
feedback and actor
interaction system
Farmer/ herd
benchmarking
and decisions
Optimize realized
productivity for
farmers
Okeyo Mwai, Julie Ojango, Raphael Mrode and ADGG partners