MONITORING OF LIVESTOCK HEALTH AND PRODUCTION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

We begin by stressing that relevant and adequate information is an ess ential ingredient of efficient decision-making processes aimed at opti mising the performance of livestock enterprises. Such decisions are un iversally made, so that though different approaches may be required, a nimal health and production monitoring (HPM) is as important in sub-Sa haran Africa (SSA) as it is in livestock systems in other parts of the world. To set the scene for our discussion of HPM in SSA, we broadly describe the main African production systems in tabular form, categori sed by ecological conditions, production goals and input and output re lations within a broad farming systems context. Subsequently, the scop e and diversity of HPM in SSA is reviewed. This review reveals that in 2 decades of system monitoring, a wide variety of objectives have bee n tackled from broad system description and constraint diagnosis to mo re focused research to identify and quantify the impact of disease and other specific factors on the productivity of cattle and small rumina nts. There have been many monitoring clients, ranging from national go vernments through aid agencies and the scientific community, to indivi dual farmers, To serve these diverse clients and their objectives, a p lethora of methods and data collection techniques have evolved, which are briefly reviewed, Methods are often system-specific. As examples, we discuss the specific monitoring needs of two contrasting production systems (pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid zones and smallholder dairy farmers in the highlands of East Africa) to indicate how monito ring has contributed to our understanding of these systems and how mon itoring might be better targeted to satisfy future needs. The impact o f HPM on the ''state of the knowledge' of traditional African producti on systems are then summarised at two levels. The first includes speci fic health and productivity information gained while the second consid ers the more general lessons learned with respect to livestock enterpr ise functions and their impact on human welfare, Finally, future monit oring needs are discussed relative to changes in African livestock sys tems. It is anticipated that further specialisation and intensificatio n of livestock enterprises will require decision-support systems, many of which already exist in the developed world and could be adapted to SSA.