The Livestock Sector Unit (LSU) in the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) Directorate of the SADC Secretariat is entrusted to promote regional integration and sustainable livestock development. The Promotion of Regional Integration in the SADC Livestock Sector Project was designed to contribute to achievements of the targets and strategies of the SADC Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) of 2004. The mission of the Livestock Unit (LU, run by the FANR Senior Programme Officer Livestock) is to promote regional integration and sustainable livestock production through the co-ordination of animal disease control strategies, human resources development, and livestock products utilisation.
The PRINT LIMS livestock community:
The RISDP identifies Regional Integration as the key to economic growth and poverty reduction . Hence, the project has as its overall objective, to contribute to poverty reduction through increased productivity and trade flows in the traditional livestock sector of Member States (MS).
The characteristics of the agricultural and livestock sectors vary greatly from one Member State (MS) to another, both regarding natural resources and in economic terms. Most MS do not have well developed commercial farming sectors so that generally sale of livestock remains limited, due to poorly developed markets, lack of marketing infrastructure and information systems.The livestock population in SADC is estimated at 62 million cattle, 32 million sheep, 41 million goats, 10 million pigs, 2 million donkeys and horses and 242 million poultry. Available livestock figures indicate a very low or negative growth for cattle, and modest growth for small ruminants (goats and sheep).
The PRINT Livestock Project in FANR became operational in July 2005. One of the project’s specific objective is to establish a livestock information management system (LIMS) in Animal Production and Health, Marketing and Trade . The generation of up-to-date and reliable information will assist the coordinating role of FANR as well as the development of harmonized policies and strategies in the SADC livestock sector.A full information system has therefore been developed and promoted. It will be used by all SADC Member States (at national level) and at SADC secretariat level (for regional consolidation of relevant information).
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