Markets

On the road to salvaging livestock market data: Digitizing livestock market data from Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions

By Kevin Kidimu,
Research Associate, International Livestock Research Institute

Since independence, Kenya has grappled with collection of livestock market data. The livestock production department was established in 1987 and since then, the ministries of agriculture and livestock have been split and merged several times, negatively impacting the livestock subsector. The creation and dissolution of ministries has come with a change in priorities, which has resulted in glaring gaps in collection of livestock market information. Access to information on livestock prices, volumes traded at markets, breeds, sex and age group of animals, has been hampered.

Previous efforts to close these information gaps have not borne fruit due to intermittent funding from the National Treasury. Recurrent droughts in the recent past have compelled government and development partners to embark on efforts to boost resilience of pastoral communities to secure their livelihoods. To achieve this goal, it is important to have information that will help producers make better choices in livestock trade. This need has led the State Department of Livestock, through the World Bank’s Regional Pastoral Livelihoods Resilience Project (RPLRP), to revive data collection across livestock markets in pastoral and agropastoral counties of Kenya. Despite this effort, there have been challenges in collecting raw data. The State Department of Livestock (SDL) has now partnered with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to salvage livestock market data that has been collected over the years but is not available in the SDL database.

Continue reading this article in the Innovate Digest.

Towards a robust national livestock market information system: Stakeholders convene to chart way forward

Sustainable livestock systems

Stakeholders workshop on livestock market information systems Participants at the stakeholders’ workshop on livestock market information system held on 11 July 2017 in Naivasha, Kenya (photo credit: ILRI/Dorine Odongo)

Access to accurate and timely market information among pastoralist livestock producers and market actors is a perennial concern, even more so following the immense emphasis and efforts placed on improving livestock production in drylands. Livestock production being the major (and in most cases the only) source of livelihoods for communities in the drylands of Kenya, the need to address the full continuum of livestock production from breeding all the way to market access cannot be overemphasized.

Consequently, many attempts are being made by different stakeholders —both governmental and non-governmental actors— to collect real time market information. For example, the livestock component of the USAID Feed the Future Kenya Accelerated Value Chain Development project (AVCD) which seeks to increase income from sales of livestock focuses on enhancing…

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Insurance for Ethiopian herders aims to combat drought, conflict – TRFN

011ffdc9 Nomadic livestock herders in Ethiopia have received their first payout from an insurance scheme that tracks poor pasture conditions with satellite technology.

Ethiopia has difficulty drawing full advantage from its livestock resources – the largest in Africa – because of the unreliability of pasture and water caused by persistent drought.

The new insurance scheme, known as index-based livestock insurance, aims to reduce losses, support pastoral communities, and lower the risk of conflict sparked by pastoralists migrating into agricultural areas in search of forage or water.

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Insuring the uninsured – IBLI and partners extend in Ethiopia

As the world of finance continues to evolve the need for insurance also is growing both in Ethiopia and around the world. However rural communities and especially pastoralist communities tended until recently to have been denied access to insurance among other reasons being their remoteness and lack of specialized insurance scheme for their community. But that’s about to change as Oromia Insurance Company  Share Company (OIC) one of the newest entrants to the industry has embarked on covering this often neglected community starting with the Borena pastoralist community.

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