Duties and Responsibilities
Background Africa is off track to meet Sustainable Development Goal 2 on Zero Hunger by 2030 and the African 2063 goals related to food security. In 2023, over 298 million Africans, representing 40% of the global total, faced hunger, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating the situation. Despite holding 65% of arable land, Africa’s food systems are highly vulnerable to climatic shocks, disproportionately affecting pastoralists and other marginalized groups. There is, therefore, an urgent need to transform African food systems towards making them more resilient and inclusive, to reduce the impact of climate change and ensure the inclusion of vulnerable populations, including pastoralists whose livelihoods depend on ecosystems that are extremely vulnerable to climate shocks. The livestock value chain presents an immense opportunity to serve as the basis for agri-food value chain transformation, addressing Africa’s food security and nutrition challenges while promoting diversification and trade. This sector currently faces challenges, including vulnerability to climate change, land tenure insecurity, and conflicts which primarily rely on communally managed land and pasture. The challenges are further compounded by poor access to inputs; inadequate access to quality breeds that align with market demand for food and leather, limited financing and insurance options—especially for drought coverage; and failure to meet sanitary and phytosanitary standards, as well as limited technical capacities. Additionally, a low level of cross-border trade in livestock products and commodities adversely limits investment and agri-food system resilience and transformation. Addressing these challenges requires reforming policy and regulatory frameworks, enhancing market opportunities, and fostering cooperation to overcome constraints In East Africa, specifically Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda, livestock is a critical economic pillar for livelihoods, food security, and national income. In Somalia, livestock contributes nearly half of the national GDP, with pastoralism dominating production. However, recurrent climate shocks, biodiversity loss, and disease outbreaks have devastated the sector, leading to widespread displacement and dependence on imports and aid. Kenya’s livestock industry employs half of the agricultural labour force and contributes significantly to GDP, but rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and recurrent droughts in arid and semi-arid regions have intensified competition for scarce resources, increased mortality rates, and worsened disease prevalence.Uganda’s livestock sector, though smaller in scale, remains vital, supporting 4.5 million people and contributing 17% to agricultural GDP. Production systems vary from pastoralism in the north to mixed crop-livestock farming in the central and southern regions. Yet, climate change is eroding productivity through reduced forage, prolonged droughts, and rising pest and disease burdens. Across all three countries, the livestock sector faces mounting challenges from environmental stressors, resource conflicts, and health risks, threatening its sustainability and the resilience of communities that depend on it. While the livestock value chain presents an immense opportunity to form the basis of agri-food value chain transformation, addressing Africa’s food security and nutrition challenges while promoting diversification and trade, the sector currently faces challenges. These include including: vulnerability to climate change, land tenure insecurity, and conflicts, especially for pastoral systems, which primarily rely on communally managed land and pasture. The challenges are further compounded by poor access to inputs; inadequate access to quality breeds that align with market demand for food and leather, and climate resilience; limited financing and insurance options—especially for drought coverage; and failure to meet sanitary and phytosanitary standards, as well as limited technical capacities. Additionally, a low level of cross-border trade in livestock products and commodities adversely limits investment and agri-food system resilience and transformation. Addressing these challenges requires reforming policy and regulatory frameworks, enhancing market opportunities, and fostering cooperation to overcome constraints. Insights from ECA's work in Botswana, along with the ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) advancements in breeding, feed, pasture management, and climate resilience, can inform sustainable solutions. Given the sector's potential for growth to meet increasing demand, developing inclusive and resilient livestock value chains would reduce rural poverty, improve livelihoods, and ensure sustainability in the face of climate change. It is in view of this that ECA developed a project to build capacity of Member States to develop policies strategies and programmes that help to address challenges in the sector, focused on Kenya, Somalia and Uganda. In view of this, ECA seeks the services of a consultant to perform the following tasks: 1. Prepare an inception report detailing the conceptual framework, the methodology, timelines for delivery of the milestones and outputs 2. Plan, organise and facilitate an inception workshop, including the identification of participants, presentation of the inception report, and the preparation of the meeting report. 3. Conduct a literature review; interviews with leading experts, actors along the livestock value chain (LVC) and analyse the information 4. Conduct a review of policy and regulatory frameworks in support of resilient, inclusive, and competitive LVC, and identify key entry points for amendments. 5. Prepare an assessment report summarise above findings (3, 5) 6. Prepare advocacy/training materials for capacity building towards responsive policy and regulatory environment 7. Plan, organize, and facilitate validation of findings/capacity building and writeshop to prepare proosed policy ammenments 8. Prepare and submit final reports incorporating inputs provided in validation process 9. Provide overall support to country level activities for the project
