ILRI News

ILRI is sad to announce that John Vercoe, former Chairman of both the ILRI Board of Trustees and the Committee of Board Chairs of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), died in September undergoing heart surgery in Brisbane, Australia.

A celebration of his life was held in Rockhampton, Australia, on 21 October 2005.

John Vercoe was a special member of the ILRI family. John nurtured the formation of ILRI and shaped the international livestock research agenda. He provided exemplary leadership while serving on ILRI’s Board of Trustees for six years, five of them as Chair, retiring from the Board only at the end of last year.

John's role in ILRI's work began long before ILRI was established. Perhaps uniquely, John played a significant role in the evolution of all three CGIAR livestock institutes in Africa: the Ethiopia-based International Livestock Centre for Africa, called by its acronym, ILCA, the Kenya-based International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases, known as ILRAD, and ILRI, the institute these two merged to become in 1995, with campuses in both Ethiopia and Kenya.

In 1981 John served on the CGIAR Technical Advisory Committee Quinquennial Review of ILCA in Ethiopia. This was a critical review for ILCA, and set that institute on firm ground in its earlier years. A decade later, John chaired an equally critical External Program and Management Review of ILRAD in Kenya. ILRI's current Director General, Carlos Seré, served on the same review committee as John's economist. It was John's vision for ILRAD to partner with other organizations in the developing as well as developed worlds in 'action research' to have more immediate impacts on poverty, hunger and environmental degradation. Carlos Seré is carrying on this legacy of John's today.

A few years later, John guided the consolidation of ILCA and ILRAD in the formation of ILRI, which began operations in 1995, and then ensured that the new institute was based on a solid foundation. He understood the role of board chair well, providing leadership by building a team of trustees who provided ILRI with wise counsel. Among many strategic contributions John made to ILRI was his promotion of pro-poor interventions made possible by an on-going Livestock Revolution and ILRI's revised strategy, developed in 2002, which focuses explicitly on reducing world poverty by exploiting three livestock pathways out of poverty.

John has left a strong imprint on ILRI and international livestock-for-development issues. His courage was manifested in three main ways for us – taking on an institutional merger daunting to others, never compromising on scientific excellence, and always being prepared to explore new opportunities, even when those carried risk. He enjoyed challenging ILRI's scientific and management assumptions. We are the better for it. That ILRI is now regarded highly  in international circles is due in no small part to John's unflagging commitment to this institute. John never stopped promoting ILRI and he never stopped telling us that we were creating the premiere international livestock research institute.

He also believed strongly in the CGIAR, which sponsors ILRI. He saw the CGIAR as a network of research institutions effectively helping the world's poorest people solve some of their severest agricultural problems through science. He was most recently engaged in creating more cohesion among the 15 research centres of the CGIAR.

John's heart was as big as his commitment. He was more than admired by ILRI staff. He was robustly liked by everyone from drivers to scientists to ministers. Everyone simply enjoyed being around this warm, funny, caring man. His laugh was infectious, his optimism unstoppable, his gentleness unmistaken. He always asked about the well being of our families and remembered even the most difficult names, however foreign to his Australian ears. He was for us, in brief, a good friend as well as an inspired leader.

We loved him well and will miss him badly. Our hearts go out to his family and his many many friends.

Carlos Seré, ILRI Director General
Uwe Werblow, ILRI Board Chair
For the ILRI family

Regional livestock trade in West Africa is suffering due to lack of policy integration and illegal cross-border "taxes".

Livestock trade policies differ widely between countries in West Africa. Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger are livestock exporting countries, and want to strengthen livestock marketing and processing and promote regional trade. Livestock importing countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria, promote policies that protect local livestock producers, boost internal production, and ensure food security in livestock products. A recently released report investigating livestock policies in six West African countries has urged that regional policies be streamlined, harmonised and implemented in a coordinated way to avoid bureaucratic bottlenecks. The report also noted that transportation of livestock across borders and illegal “taxes” represent significant additional marketing costs that impact negatively on regional livestock trade.

• In West Africa, cross-border transportation can cost a staggering 300% more than the equivalent transfer of beef from Europe to West Africa’s coast. Meantime, regional cross-border transfer of cattle costs twice as much as domestic transportation, despite better transportation infrastructures.
• Intra-regional trade in live animals attracts certain costs which are unlikely to be incurred if meat products are traded. For example, livestock drovers (people who drive herds of animals to market) are paid handling fees during the 2-3 day trip.
• Some governments in the region are not fully committed to the implementation of agreed trade policy reforms concerning trade liberalisation and facilitation, exchange and payments systems and investment facilitation. This negatively affects costs of livestock trade and regional integration.
• Illegal road taxation at numerous checkpoints can be as much as 10% of total marketing costs. Here, traders are required to make non-receipted payments to public agents for no obvious reason (see box below)

Recommendations include:

•  Protocols on regional livestock trade and regional integration introduced by the Union Économique et Monétaire de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (UEMOA) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), need to be streamlined, harmonised and implemented.
• Regional livestock trade should shift its current focus from live animals to meat.
• Regulations that provide for the free movement of people and goods in the region should be implemented by reducing the number of roadside checkpoints, curbing the excesses of conveyance companies (sociétés de convoyage), and actively fighting illegal road taxation.

Report and Briefs

The full report and a set of four briefs are now available for download.

Improvement of Livestock Marketing and Regional Trade in West Africa T.O. Williams, B.Spycher and I. Okike,

Brief 1: This brief summarises the discussions and major outputs from a regional workshop held in Niamey, Niger in 1999. The objective was to analyse the economic, institutional and policy constraints to livestock marketing and trade in order to provide a basis for new policy interventions to improve market efficiency and intra-regional livestock trade.

Marketing livestock in West Africa: Opportunities and constraints: Brief 1  T.O. Williams, I. Okike, I. Baltenweck and C. Delgado

Brief 2: Livestock markets that are strategically located along the border of neighbouring countries to ease cross-border trade were studied to identify livestock marketing channels from farm gates to terminal markets. Economic operators and livestock flows within these channels were also examined along with seasonal variations and other factors affecting livestock prices. The findings indicate that producers and operators can realise significant economic benefits by increasing meat production and livestock trade value through improved credit access and better market information.

Livestock marketing channels, flows and prices in West Africa: Brief 2. I. Okike, T.O. Williams, B. Spycher, S. Staal and I. Baltenweck
 

Brief 3: This brief analyses the costs incurred in the transfer of animals through the marketing chain and highlights areas where costs could be reduced for example, intra-regional trade in live animals attracts certain types of costs which are unlikely to be incurred if meat products, rather than live animals, are traded.

Lowering cross-border livestock transportation and handling costs in West Africa: Brief 3. I. Okike, B. Spycher, T.O. Williams and I. Baltenweck
 

Brief 4: Livestock trade has the potential to contribute even more to foreign exchange earnings if properly promoted. The major economic, institutional and policy barriers to the realisation of the full potentials of livestock trade are identified in this brief.

Promoting livestock marketing and intraregional trade in West Africa: Brief 4   I. Okike, T.O. Williams and I. Baltenweck