Nouakchott, Mauritania, 29 October 2013
1 CILSS: Permanent Inter-State Committee on Drought Control in the Sahel 2 ECOWAS: Economic Community of West African States
3 WAEMU: West African Economic and Monetary Union
The OIE welcomes this conference . Thank you, Mauritania, the World Bank, and all who helped to organise it .
The threats to the future of pastoralism are global and are likely to have a lasting effect on populations whose way of life and knowledge are part of our world heritage . They live in areas where pastoralism is the only alternative and the practice of grazing herbivores on natural plant resources ensures appropriate land use .
This year the OIE supported an initiative by the President of Mongolia, in which 34 countries, including 19 from Africa, took part in the first meeting to establish an ‘alliance of countries with pastoralism activities by nomadic populations’ in Paris in May 2013 (see p . 86) .
The OIE also participates in the Livestock Global Alliance, alongside such organisations as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the World Bank and the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation .
Livestock farming has been subject to a barrage of unwarranted attacks . It is high time that we conveyed objective, scientifically based information on the huge benefits of animals to humankind .
Although Africa and Asia are home to 900 million poor livestock producers, a mere 1 .7% of international aid for agriculture goes to livestock development programmes and Veterinary Services, and only 5% to 7% to research and extension .
Animal diseases cause 18% to 20% of annual deaths worldwide . An ECOWAS2/CILSS study estimates that losses from animal diseases in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were worth 921 million Euros in 2010 . Even more seriously, an investor’s risk aversion starts with an aversion to health risk, which can destroy the invested capital . It is therefore a priority to secure livestock capital for the poor and for everyone else .
In addition, 250 million animals work 50% of the arable land in developing countries, and a large proportion come
from grazing systems that play a vital role in breeding working animals, particularly in countries of the Sahel .
Lastly, the sustainable control of infectious diseases opens up highly profitable foreign markets that remain closed to animals and products from infected countries . This is still a problem for Sahel countries . To cite one example, annual exports of six to seven million animals from Somalia to Gulf countries were halted for several years because of rinderpest and Rift Valley fever, creating huge social problems in Somalia .
Although the Sahel faces considerable economic and social issues relating to animal health, solutions do exist .
For instance, OIE Member Countries have adopted international quality standards for good veterinary health governance . All WAEMU3 and ECOWAS Member Countries, as well as Mauritania and Chad, have sought and obtained an independent OIE assessment of their Veterinary Services’
compliance with these quality standards, as well as a costing of their countries’ progressive compliance . These studies are available and still current and the programmes can be launched quickly .
All these investments are considered a ‘public good’ and most are eligible for public funding .
At the regional level, cooperation is essential to control infectious diseases that know no borders . Veterinary policy harmonisation — pursued first by WAEMU and later by ECOWAS — is to be commended, as is the recent decision by ECOWAS Heads of State to establish a regional animal health centre in Bamako (Mali), to take over from the centre currently managed by the OIE, FAO and AU–IBAR . The centre has already proven extremely useful, especially in the regional effort to control avian influenza when it struck the African continent . It was established as part of the ALive (African Livestock) initiative and managed in cooperation with the African Union . It operated under the original ‘One Health’ initiative in Africa, helping to strengthen collaboration between Veterinary and Public Health Services . It works closely with the OIE Regional
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Representation for Africa, also based in Bamako . It can be re-mobilised quickly .
I conclude by stressing the importance of preparing national and regional emergency plans to tackle health and food crises and so preserve livestock capital during weather events or epizootics .
The effectiveness of these policies relies on national and regional good governance and on compliance with OIE international quality standards . In the veterinary field, these policies also rely on the existence of sub-regional vaccine banks . A pilot project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is under way in Burkina Faso and Ghana to control peste des petits ruminants on this basis .
Finally, livestock development should not be confined to trade in live animals, as is currently the case in Somalia . A prudent policy of local processing of animals (slaughterhouses, cutting plants) and animal products (dairies, tanneries), funded by private investors and targeting niche markets that value the superb organoleptic properties of Sahelian products, could also boost the resilience of Sahelian systems, if outstanding health issues were to be resolved .
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