Participants at the Consultative workshop in Tamale
Cowtribe Technology Limited, an Agtech company, has organized a National Consultative workshop on building a resilient Livestock vaccine supply chain through Private-Public Partnership (PPP) in Tamale, the Northern region.
The 4-year Women Rear Project financed by the International Development Research Center is to improve the vaccine supply chain to enable quality and affordable vaccine delivery at the last mile with a focus on reaching female livestock keepers.
The project is jointly implemented by Care International, Ghana, International Livestock Research Institute, and Cowtribe Technology Ltd.
The objective of the workshop is to build knowledge and understanding of how PPP works, understand the current situation and key issues which are relevant to achieving successful
implementation of PPPs in vaccine supply chain programming and to share experiences and knowledge and identify best practices for the establishment of PPP approaches.
The workshop was attended by government officials, civil servant staff, policy officials (Management and Functional level), analysts/specialists in PPPs, veterinary practitioners, livestock producers associations, academia, commercial companies (service providers, pharmaceutical and distributors, technology providers, and NGOs.
Livestock production is a major sub-sector of Ghana’s agricultural sector contributing largely towards meeting food needs, providing draught power, manure to maintain soil fertility and structure as well as providing income (FAO, 2019).
Communities particularly in the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West Regions of Ghana rely almost on livestock for their livelihood (FAO, 2019).
Despite the significance of the sector, livestock keepers and stakeholders encounter numerous challenges which affect productivity, key among these is access to quality and affordable animal health services.
Co-founder and CEO, Cowtribe, Awin Peter, said protecting animals from fatal infectious diseases through vaccination is often the most efficient first step in improving production.
“In Ghana, vaccine delivery in Ghana is largely controlled by the state with the participation of well-established, private operations importing high-quality, regulated veterinary vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and other animal health products from leading global manufacturers drawn from across Europe, China, India, the Middle East, and South Africa.
However, the efficiency of the supply chain rapidly deteriorates as it reaches down to the rural areas.”
He noted that the main vaccine providers are not servicing rural farmers directly and currently perceive relatively little value in the rural smallholder markets, which are recognized as being highly underdeveloped given the pressing animal health needs (DFID 2014, Ministry of Livestock & Agriculture 2016, Ugbebor 2017) without any dedicated distribution channels and supporting infrastructure for veterinary vaccines in rural areas, the rural farmers are forced to rely on fake and substandard veterinary inputs.
“Given the immense scale of this problem, addressing these constraints would require cooperation with the private sector to effectively address the continuing challenges of the control of livestock diseases on both the supply side and the demand side (e.g., low vaccine uptake among certain groups).
Supplying, distributing, and administering vaccines should be optimized by using PPPs that focus on the production, supply, and distribution of vaccines alongside public-led targeted outreach to unvaccinated populations.”
Mr. Peter revealed that Cowtribe Technology Limited , has developed a smart supply chain and logistics platform that efficiently provides livestock vaccines and other inputs to rural farmers in Ghana.
According to him, Cowtribe provides farmers with educational voice messages and helps them make vaccine purchases in small increments through a mobile based layaway model.
Chairman, Vet Council of Ghana, Dr. Jonathan Amakye Anim, said if legislation is passed it will compel farmers to vaccinate their livestock.
“ As we speak there’s an outbreak of Bird Flu and if there’s mandatory vaccination and backed by law it will be better for us and there are a lot of laws which are not in existence even though there are some policies but some farmers don’t comply and so there are still lots of legislation lacking and some of our legislation documents are still with the Attorney General’s Department and so we are praying that it comes out so that it will give us the backing to do a lot of things.”
Dr. Anim was hopeful that after the consultative workshop a group will be formed to have a special deal at the Veterinary Department for private-public partnership.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale