ILRI – DAAD PhD Graduate Fellowships

DAAD is a German Academic Exchange service which is a publicly funded, self-governing organization of the institutions of higher education in Germany. DAAD promotes international academic exchange as well as educational co-operation with developing countries through a variety of funding and scholarship programs.

The Position:

The PhD will lie within the Feed and Forage Program and be part of a Bill and Melinda Gates five – year feed project funded in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Development of feed supply demand scenarios plays a very significant part in this project. The PhD will be based in Burkina Faso, but significant time will be spent in Ethiopia.

ILRI Program: Feed and Forage Development
Main ILRI Project Title: Livestock Systems Innovation Lab: research on animal feed and on campylobacter in Sub-Saharan Africa
Graduate fellows project title: Development of nation-wide interactive decision-making tools around feed supply- demand in Ethiopia and Burkina

Much recent work on uptake of technologies in low and middle-income countries has tended to focus on farm level characteristics with little appreciation of how social capital influences technology uptake in small holder systems. Technological growth is often inhibited by risk aversion and productivity gains are often under realized. Collaborative ventures, through farmer social networks, have the potential to diffuse the risk associated with uptake of new technologies.

Responsibilities