Livestock Census in Africa as a Vital Tool for Livestock Disease Surveillance and Control

92% of the 38 responding countries conduct livestock census, of which 18 follow scheduled programmes. Of the 15 countries that have an ad hoc programme, only 8 have legislation supporting livestock census either within the veterinary services, the central statistics authority or to a limited extent within the Ministry of Livestock/Agriculture. There was no apparent relationship between absence of legislation, failure to collect tax on livestock (67%) and the frequency to conduct census. The responsibilities to develop census methods, conduct the actual census, and archiving the information was equally shared between the central statistics authorities and veterinary services. The public veterinarians and veterinary paraprofessionals were engaged in 49% of the countries, but private sector and owner declarations were accepted in a significant number of countries. Assessing available livestock resources, determining distributions and densities and having information available for national disease control programmes were ranked top by 83% to 60% of the countries. 71% of the countries always applied census information in animal health decision making, particularly for designing disease surveillance and vaccination programmes. Livestock identification was largely not linked to census programmes but 51% of the 35 countries took opportunity of national population census/ agricultural survey and animal health programmes to conduct livestock census. This provided an opportunity to the animal health professionals to assess sanitary status of livestock during these surveys. Cultural and farmer reluctance to divulge their livestock numbers was the biggest challenge identified in 17 countries. Transhumance, nomadism and constantly moving pastoralists presented challenges to enumerators in addition to the accessibility of remote areas.