Professor Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CGIAR partnerships chair. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
By Busani Bafana
NAIROBI, Apr 10 2025 – Animal scientist Lindiwe Majele Sibanda became what her grandmother earnestly prayed for when she was growing up on a farm in southern Zimbabwe.
Majele Sibanda, an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria and chair of CGIAR’s Integrated Partnership Board, is a practicing livestock farmer and a successful one at that. She is raising pedigree and indigenous cattle as well as hardy Matabele goats.
“Livestock is livelihood,” Majele Sibanda says, speaking to IPS at CGIAR Science Week, responding to the growing concerns about livestock farming as an environmental threat.
Livestock production supports more than 1.3 billion people globally in terms of food and nutrition security. Africa has an estimated 800 million livestock keepers in a sector that contributes up to 50 percent of agricultural GDP and supports the livelihoods of about 350 million people.
There is a flipside, though. The livestock sector is currently responsible for up to 20 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, underlying the need for more efficient and sustainable livestock production systems.
Aspire to a ‘Protein Revolution’
“The biggest revolution we have to aspire to is the protein revolution, and the revolution will not be achieved without animal-source foods like milk, blood, and meat,” says Majele Sibanda. “We cannot achieve it with plant-based nutrition alone. I believe in livestock — but livestock that is produced sustainably.”
Livestock are both a solution and a challenge but will remain an essential part of the food system. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS
Livestock has economic and social attributes that act as a store of value for farmers. Livestock farmers in Africa produce half of the continent’s meat and milk. Milk secures the nutritional needs of children, aiding in their development, while assorted livestock products contribute to income generation as they are traded, with meat, milk, and eggs being prominent commodities. Besides food, livestock provides non-food products like leather, wool, and pharmaceuticals.
Majele Sibanda is a champion for the International Livestock Research Institute Strategy, which is looking at sustainable livestock production systems.
In 2024, ILRI launched a new strategy, ‘Unlocking sustainable livestock’s potential through research for better lives and a better planet,’ to guide its programs in the next five years to 2030.
The strategy addresses global challenges such as climate change, food insecurity, and sustainable development. It aims to improve livestock systems in Africa and Asia through the implementation of large-scale, science-based sustainable livestock solutions that influence policy decisions and investments.
Science Drives Development
A distinguished leader and policy advocate on food systems, Majele Sibanda is convinced scientific research can enhance agriculture as a driver of development.
“With science, we can feed the world of 9.7 billion by 2050,” said Majele Sibanda, who has the privilege of being a farmer, a businessperson, and a jury member for the Food Planet Prize, the world’s biggest prize in the sector.
“Technology on the shelf is not good enough,” she emphasized. “Technology on the ground takes drivers—it has to be conveyed. Scaling up requires policies. We talk about it as a science but let us talk about it as a multi-stakeholder agenda of moving science to the people who need it most. There can be no better base than doing it on-site together—from agenda setting to the users.”
Farmers Are Scientists, Custodians of Knowledge
But is it possible for farmers to adopt scientific innovations without abandoning the indigenous know-how of farming, which has supported them for generations?
Majele Sibanda believes so.
“Farmers are not stupid,” she retorts. “Farmers are scientists. You cannot farm without knowledge. They are custodians of knowledge and are continuously learning, whether they have gone to school for it or suckled it from their grandmother, like me and my father, who is still an active farmer or from their neighbors.”
She said farmers are continuously on a quest for new ways to improve both their land and animals.
“The beauty of science is that you have a dedicated group of persons whose core business is to generate their knowledge. That knowledge is for improving productivity in a sustainable way,” Majele Sibanda said, adding, “This rift between a farmer and a scientist does not and should not exist provided there is humility to accept that as a scientist you are learning and as a farmer you are learning. We have a common goal of sustainable production and sustainable food systems—feeding the soil, feeding the family, and feeding the pocket. We have a common goal of sustainable production and sustainable food systems.”
“If researchers understand the aspirations of farmers, they will be able to meet them halfway with the right technologies. The challenge we have had is that researchers want an easy way out at times and want to put all technologies on the shelf and do not want to invest in a local system that helps farmers adapt.”
Majele Sibanda highlights the importance of partnerships between the CGIAR and the national research systems in the provision and sharing of innovative technologies that enable farmers to adapt as well as mitigate the impacts of climate change.
“Unless we walk hand in hand, research technologies and innovations will sit on the shelf,” she said.
IPS UN Bureau Report,
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