Southern African Development Community

Livestock ...

Livestock constitutes an important natural resource of the Southern African Region, with over 60% of the region’s total land area suitable for livestock farming. The farm animal resources of SADC are rich and immensely diverse. The livestock population in SADC is estimated at 64 million cattle, 39 million sheep, 38 million goats, 7 million pigs, 1 million equines and 380 million poultry. An estimated 75% out of the above livestock population is kept under smallholder traditional systems. Traditionally, farm animals are a source of food, skins, fertilizer, traction power, medicine and other raw materials.

Although the livestock sector offers the region an opportunity for accelerated economic growth, diversification and increased trade, poor animal disease control and husbandry, lack of marketing infrastructure and information, lack of harmonised policy and strategy and inadequate capacity for coordination are hindering achieving those goals.

Following centralised coordination of sectoral programmes at the SADC Secretariat, the Livestock Sector Unit (LSU) of the FANR Directorate is the focal point for the coordination of livestock development related activities. Projects and programmes, such as Promotion of Regional INTegration (PRINT) in the livestock sector of SADC, SADC foot and mouth disease (FMD) Programme and SADC Trans-boundary Animal Diseases (TADs) project, addressing the above-mentioned constraints have been launched or about to become operational. With these projects and programmes and in close collaboration with the Livestock Technical Committee (LTC) and its sub-committees, the LSU is in a better position to coordinate the livestock sector of the region.