Ghana Livestock Development Policy and Strategy,

The present Ghana Livestock Development Policy and Strategy (GLDPS) addresses the issues affecting the development of the Ghana livestock sub-sector such as the excessive importation of livestock and livestock products especially poultry, increased incidence of emerging and re-emerging animal diseases, inadequate supply of vaccines and veterinary pharmaceuticals, inadequate livestock infrastructure, transhumance, financing , research and technology dissemination in the livestock industry.
In particular, the Vision of the livestock sector is a modernized, competitive and sustainable livestock industry culminating in a structurally transformed national economy and evident in food and nutritional security, employment generation, equity and poverty reduction while preserving the environment.
Chapter 7 establishes the goals as follows: 1) To enhance the supply of meat, livestock and dairy products from domestic sources, innovation, generation and utilization, capacity and entrepreneurship skills of livestock value chain actors. 2) To enhance access to livestock markets, services and value addition. These goals are consistent with those of the Livestock Development Strategy for Africa (AUC, 2014). The overall objective of the present Policy is to develop a competitive and more efficient livestock industry that increases domestic production, reduces importation of meat and livestock products and contributes to the improvement of the livelihoods of all livestock value chain actors and the national economy while protecting the environment, preserving livestock biodiversity and ensuring bio-security. Whereas the specific objectives are: 1) To support the existing livestock production systems for improving production, productivity and income of livestock producers, most of which are women and small scale farmers. 2) To strengthen overall animal health cover through early warning system, prevention, control and eradication of disease. 3) To support training, research and development initiatives on issues pertaining to livestock sector for improving livestock production, productivity and health as well as the profitability of the entire livestock value chain. 4) To improve the production and productivity of livestock by promoting and disseminating technologies developed by the research system. 5) To promote conservation and genetic improvement of indigenous breeds of livestock. 6) To increase availability of feed and fodder resources to meet the requirement of various species of livestock to attain optimal productivity. 7) To encourage value addition of livestock products. 8) To create an enabling environment to attract investment and finance for improving livestock infrastructure, production, processing, value addition and marketing.
The text consists of 10 Parts as follows: Introduction (1); Status of the livestock sector (2); Livestock and environmental issues (3); Importation of livestock, livestock products and feed ingredients (4); Livestock value chain actors (5); Past and present livestock sector development policies (6); Ghana livestock development policy and strategy (7); Conclusions (8); References (9); Annexes (10).