Out for Africa

When I was starting to write this blog wanted to focus on more "work type" topics, mostly dealing with agriculture or animal breeding. This was the initial plan, which has slightly adapted in the meantime. One thing I was clear about from the beginning that I would like to deal with my two main interests, the advancments in technology related issues and my passion for agriculture with special interest in developing countries.

While writing this post I am thinking about the reasons behind this. Although I had little formal education in "development studies" so far, I met a bunch of people from these regions. I have in mind my former and current colleagues and friends from the BOKU office or from the EMABG. Although I have never been in those countries, they became one of my main interests, through the people I met.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I got the opportunity to participate on the ILRI - SLU - FAO workshop called "Capacity building for sustainable use of animal genetic resources"  in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia end of November this year. I was even happier that I could be one of the presenters. According to the plan I will have half a day to present the R data analysis and programming environment to the participants. I had similar (although shorter) presentations few times before, mostly for EMABG students, so I have bit of an experience with it. Although this will be a different setting and a different audience, so I am going to adapt the contents accordingly.

I was traveling quite a lot inside Europe, but this will be my first jouney outside the continent. First one goes to Africa.