Written by Ekta Patel
Boosting Uganda’s investments in livestock development was the topic of discussion today where over 100 participants including policymakers, researchers and academics, donors, civil society, as well as government and private sector representatives from Uganda, Kenya and Germany gathered for a stakeholder meeting.
Around 70% of all Ugandan households keep some livestock – cattle, pigs, sheep, goats or poultry; mostly selling it to local markets. The lives of these animals are threatened by a host of pathogens and animal losses by disease threaten the livelihoods of their owners and keepers. Achieving these goals – healthier animals as well as healthier people – is the aim of the #BuildUganda program that is ‘boosting Uganda’s investments in livestock development’.
Launched today by Rose Ademun, Commissioner for Animal Health from the Minister of State for Animal Industry in the Uganda Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), #BuildUganda is a research for development collaboration to prevent and tackle animal diseases and zoonoses in Uganda. Led by MAAIF, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), it mobilizes national and international research and development partners from Uganda, Kenya and Germany. The five-year program is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the CGIAR Research Programs on Livestock and on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). One of the four components in the #BuildUganda program focuses on the mitigation of antimicrobial resistance in poultry.
The AMR component of BUILD mirrors exactly the CGIAR AMR strategy. The strategy, in fact, acted as a blueprint when developing the project and addresses the 5 pillars of our strategy: understanding use, research transmission of AMR at the human-livestock-environment interface and role of antibiotic residues, interventions to mitigate AMR risks, support an enabling policy environment (here support the implementation of the Uganda AMR National Action Plan), and support capacity development of different value chain actors.
Barbara Wieland, Leader of the CGIAR AMR hub and Team Leader of Herd Health in at ILRI said, “For the CGIAR AMR hub the BUILD project is really exciting, the project concentrates on poultry production in Uganda, and through that allows us to demonstrate how focusing on all the pillars of the CGIAR AMR strategy helps to mitigate AMR risks in a production system”.
The expected outcomes of the BUILD Uganda AMR component are:
