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Analysis, Henry Bwisa
Nairobi, August 27, 2003 (The Nation) – The livestock sector has always had a big potential to drive Africa's economic growth.
It supplies most of the continent with food and power and underpins its agriculture, service and manufacturing sectors. Indeed, this can be described as Africa's "sunrise" sector with a rapidly expanding market and a bright future.
But because of official neglect and other factors, this bright sun may be setting before it rises.
In many African countries this sector receives less than 10 per cent of government agricultural spending and less than one per cent of total expenditure.
In Africa, agriculture employs nearly 70 per cent of the labor force and provides subsistence for most of the population. It is a major source of foreign exchange and the single biggest contributor to Gross Domestic Product.
Within agriculture, the livestock sub-sector contributes up to 30 per cent of the GDP involving a majority of the rural population. Kenya's pastoralist sector is worth $800 million and internal livestock trade alone brings in up to $80 million a year.
Livestock in Botswana contributes 88 per cent of the total agricultural output. In Chad livestock makes up over one third of exports and is the major source of livelihood for 40 percent of the population. Hides and skins make up over 10 percent of the export earnings in Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
In Cote d'Ivoire the annual consumption of bush meat was twice that of meat from livestock and the value was estimated at CFA 77 billion or nearly two per cent of GDP.
In Somalia around 60 per cent of the population are pastoralists and 25 per cent are agro-pastoralists. Nearly one third of households in and around Kampala keep livestock, including pigs and chickens. With 16 per cent of the world's camels, Sudan produces 87,000 tonnes of camel meat a year and is the major African exporter of camel meat to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
The arid and semi-arid lands cover over 55 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa's surface area. Experts say this land would produce no human food if it were not grazed by animals. Even in wetter areas livestock maintains soil fertility and biodiversity and ploughs most of Africa's arable food producing land.
So why is this crucial sector given so little attention? Privatization of veterinary services is not moving as fast as desired. The Breton-Woods institutions-propelled structural adjustment programmes philosophy may have been received with mixed feelings but we now know that it makes good sense. Take the privatisation aspect for example. It is today a well-known fact that from the entrepreneurship viewpoint the state is a rather bad business manager. The state makes a better business facilitator rather than a direct participator in running profit-making entities.
If for some African countries like Kenya the year 2020 means industrialization status then globally the same year is expected to see a doubling of demand for livestock products in the developed countries. Meat consumption alone will increase from 220 million tonnes in 2001 to 310 million tones in 2020. This translates into more than 700 million zebu cattle.
With Africa's lowest costs of meat production in the world it is logical to see emerging investment opportunities here. It is not lost to us that in Africa ecosystems favour extensive farming systems which are chiefly in rural areas and out of reach of conventional government veterinary services.
Government disease reporting systems are dysfunctional and data on important livestock diseases is limited. A rural livestock revolution to benefit from the impending global meat demand arises. The private vet and para-vet in the pastoralist areas of Africa could do the trick.
Global data shows that clinical veterinary service delivery by the private sector, financed by a normal commercial relationship between the provider and the customer, makes more sense and most cents.
Unfortunately the private vet practitioner in Africa faces a lot of difficulties.
Recently a regional private pastoralist's veterinary practices workshop was organised by the African Union's Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU/IBAR) in Kenya.
In his speech, Dr. Jotham Musiime, the AU/IBAR acting director lamented the slow development of private veterinary services in Africa. National-level privatisation programmes have overlooked pastoral areas regarding them as low potential. Consequently, veterinarians wishing to invest in pastoral areas are denied access to credit.
Despite lack of official government support some daring and risk-loving Africans have started private veterinary businesses in the pastoral areas and are helping Africa feed her people.
AU/IBAR has been instrumental in assisting these entrepreneurs. National Veterinary Association Privatization Schemes (NVAPS) in individual African countries are also helping. Nevertheless in virtually all-African countries the private veterinary practitioner in pastoralist areas operates under very harsh conditions.
The challenge facing helpers like the NVAPS is to extend their hand to pastoralist areas. Participants of the workshop from the eastern African countries had one common concern - the enabling legal framework and the lack of law enforcement.
For some, taxation is unbearable. In Kenya for example, the Kenya Veterinary Board, demands Sh5,000, the local authority up to Sh10,000, the Pest Control Board about Sh5,000 and the public health authorities Sh2,000. This adds up to more than Sh20,000 annually regardless of the size of the business.
It would be inaccurate to say that there is no policy framework for privatizing vet services in pastoral areas. The problem is implementation. In some cases government vets unfairly compete with private vets. The competition is made even worse when a district vet officer (DVO) who is himself/herself practicing has to approve the licensing of a private practitioner.
Reading between the lines of the private veterinary practitioner's difficulties it becomes clearer why during the last 10 years Africa has spent about three times its export earnings on imports of livestock products. The continent loses $1.5 billion worth of foreign exchange yearly on net imports of meat and milk. To reverse this trend there is dire need to adopt appropriate national policies and regulation on veterinary privatization.
Prof Bwisa is an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
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