The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation granted a UF-run project $8.7 million for a five-year research project on food security and poverty alleviation efforts in Africa.
This grant is in addition to a $49 million grant IFAS received in 2015 from the U.S. Agency for International Development, said Adegbola Adesogan, the director of UF’s Feed The Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems.
The funding goes to Adesogan’s lab, which researches topics dealing with the food and health of vulnerable people. UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences announced the grant Wednesday.
The Gates’ additional funding will allow researchers to improve livestock feeds and food safety in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, Adesogan said.
“We want this work to be sustained after the life of the grant,” he said. “We don’t want to do research that just sits on the shelf.”
Arie Havelaar, a Department of Animal Sciences professor, said funding will allow his team to study diseases transmitted from animals to humans to minimize childhood exposure to harmful bacteria found in chicken feces.
“The process of selecting what would be funded has been difficult and very involved,” he said.
Proper childhood health and development is related to livestock productivity, Adesogan said. The research will focus on identifying efficient feeding methods for livestock as they are versatile sources of capital, income and food in the community.
Contact Elliott Nasby at enasby@alligator.org. Follow him on Twitter at @NasbyElliott.
