Future Function Policies and Strategies of the Livestock Sector:

Abstract

The Agricultural sector contributes 50% to GDP and over 75% of foreign exchange earnings. The livestock sub-sector contributes 18% and 30% to the national and agricultural GDP respectively. The human population is predicted to the 32 million by the year 2000. On the other hand the cattle population is estimated to be 13.6 million and is growing at 0.5% per annum. The demand for livestock products will have to increase by three to four fold in order to keep up with the present consumption levels. Livestock development programmes in the past have not been successful and sustainable due to a combination of unfavorable external economic factors, inappropriate domestic policies and institutional arrangements and in some cases approaches have failed to consider the role of the private sector in addition to specific subsector constraints.