Healthy livestock offers a means of ensuring long-term economic sustainability and eliminating poverty, hunger and disease. Realizing that livestock production is the second most important sector of agriculture in developing countries, VIA determined that rapid access to data was crucial to sustainability and decision-making. Through collaborative efforts, we helped implement AU-IBAR’s mission to become the central authority for animal health and reproduction information throughout Africa by harnessing mobile technology for data capture and reporting.
In a robust $3.2M project over 3 years, VIA successfully established a comprehensive animal health information system (AHIS) utilizing mobile technology to conduct active and passive surveillance of animal resources throughout Africa.
By implementing this system, VIA was able to strengthen the institutional capacity of veterinarian service organizations within Africa to collect data from the field and eliminate paper reporting.
VIA established the animal health information system in four African countries: Ghana (10 regional veterinary offices), Rwanda (10 Districts), Uganda (10 districts) and Kenya (7 Provinces). This system produces amounts of surveillance and reporting capability that no other system can provide throughout in the region.
The information and knowledge management capacity of AU‐IBAR was enhanced by VIA to swiftly respond to disease emergencies and to properly plan interventions in animal production, marketing and trade.
VIA’s model of collaboration was on display by demonstrating technical expertise and leadership capacity to support the programmatic objectives of AU-IBAR and multiple international partners such as: SRA International Inc., African Virtual Open Initiatives and Resources (AVOIR), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the African Union’s Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources, World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other African and international stakeholders and partner institutions.
The end result of VIA’s leadership was an “all in one” open source data collection, transmission, analysis, dissemination and storage system. To date, no other animal health information system in Africa like this exists.