Liberalisation and re-structuring of livestock services
During the mid 1980s, as the public sector were confronted with severe financial constraints many African countries faced a major turning point in the provision of animal health services. Governments looked to privatisation and the liberalisation of markets to provide a cost saving alternative to the subsidised services of the past. But re-structuring reforms over the last decade have not always been as successful as governments, nor the farmers purchasing the services, might have hoped.
Liberalised markets, by nature, presume that those (such as farmers) purchasing services will have adequate information available to them on the quantity and quality of the service provided. But, in the case of animal health services farmers are often unaware of the true standard of service being supplied because they will be given no breakdown of costs for transportation, medicine and expertise in the overall fee charged.
The issue is further complicated by the range of animal health workers that now provide services to farmers: For instance in Kenya veterinarians, as degree level trained professionals, were in the past generally government employees who provided animal health services assisted by paraprofessionals (livestock officers and animal health assistants), who had also received some training. Now other animal health workers include junior animal health assistants, who receive on-the-job experience, and paravets (farmers trained in basic animal health care). So, while a farmer may have a choice between those available to provide the service he requires, the standard and the cost of the service are rarely equal. For example, a disease may be diagnosed by a vet or paravet but the farmer has no way of knowing if the diagnosis, the prescribed course of treatment and the cost of treatment are appropriate.
Market forces the answer?
Market competition is generally an effective mechanism for ensuring the lowest economic price for a product or service but this fails to apply when the cost of the service is influenced by the nature of the disease, qualification of the animal health practitioner, means of transport and the perceived wealth status of the client. Wealthier clients are often charged far more for a product or service and in some cases, a farmer may be unable to differentiate between the expertise of a professional veterinarian or paraprofessional. This is not only detrimental to professional vets, who could be wiped out in a price war by less qualified practitioners, it also creates a hazard to farmers with cost cutting resulting in underdosages and administration of expired drugs.
In Kenya, paraprofessionals are currently forbidden to practise privately and should only work under the supervision and guidance of a professional veterinarian. But, given their numbers, paraprofessionals are more easily accessible to farmers, are known to operate independently and the need for their services by farmers has to be acknowledged. Maintaining the farmers' choice of service is recommended but it has been suggested by Leonard Otieno Oruko, a Kenyan agricultural economist studying the problem, that professionals and paraprofessionals should form an 'Animal Health Practitioners Association' which would protect the interests of the veterinary practitioners and maintain professional ethics, thereby also protecting the farmer.
Small-holder farmers could also protect themselves from any risk of opportunistic behaviour by practitioners by forming farmers' groups. By acting as a consumer organisation, a group can pool their herds for purposes of animal health services such as vaccination or artificial insemination, which can be more cost-effective for the farmers and those providing the services.
A public sector role remains
Despite the improvement in re-structuring that needs to take place, it still has to be recognised that the public sector plays an important role in providing certain services to farmers. For instance it is unreasonable to expect only those farmers with livestock at immediate risk from diseases such as rinderpest or Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia to pay for vaccination when farmers not currently affected by the disease will also benefit from these control measures. In this case there is a need for the public sector to organise and finance such a service even if it is carried out with the help of private practitioners.
Policy-makers also have to recognise the role of the farmers themselves. In countries such as Sudan, or in pastoral regions where little infrastructure exists, farmers have been able to adapt and manage their own animal health systems without the intervention of professionals. The proof of their ability to cope with change is evident in the steady level of livestock production. The future provision of livestock services in Africa will therefore be more effective if lessons are learned from a 'bottom-up' approach and farmers' ability to manage their own livestock production systems should be taken into account when deciding policies and programmes.
