WINDHOEK – People all over the world these days want to know what they are eating, more especially when it comes to meat and meat products.
To meet the demand the country must have a credible livestock identification and traceability system in place. This is not exception in case of Namibia as most if not all trading partners would like to buy meat and meat products from properly identified animals. In 2005 Namibia Livestock Identification and Traceability System (NamLITS) was introduced on the southern part of the veterinary cordon fence. In recent years the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) has been striving towards bringing the health status of animals north and south of the veterinary cordon fence (or on par. Therefore the policy of eradication of trans-boundary animal diseases in the northern communal area of Namibia (NACs) was developed and NamLITS was identified as a tool which can support this initiative. Therefore with the support from Millennium Challenge Account – Namibia, it was decided to extend NamLITS to the NACs.
The objectives of the project are to manage and control animal disease, improve animal health in the NACs, a tool to be used to access better market for animals north of the veterinary cordon fence, and the end result of these is to improve the livelihood of communities in the northern communal areas. NamLITS was operational in the south of the veterinary cordon fence since 2005 with single tag. After the approval of the policy of eradication of trans-boundary animal diseases in the NACs, NamLITS was seen as a tool which can be used to achieve this objective. Therefore the implementation of NamLITS V2 started with the development of guiding documents such as user specification, system design, implementation plan as well as execution plan for each phase. The implementation of NamLITS in the NACs stared in December 2010 with the pilot phase in Zambezi, Kavango and the Oshikoto regions.
The pilot phase was followed by the launch of Phase 1 on March 30, 2011, at Mile 10 crush pen in Kavango East. A total of 35 teams (280 staff members) were used during Phase One mass tagging throughout the regions with 826,611cattle tagged. Phase One ran from April to October 2011. Shortly after the Phase One report was drafted, recommendations on how to improve and where to improve were indicated. Phase Two was launched in the north of the Kunene region this April. The aim was to raise awareness in the region as some of the farmers in that region were not willing to let their animals being tagged sighting out that the Government at later stage might take their cattle. Shortly after the lunch training of staff members on NamLITS release 2 was rolled out with FlexPro training the NamLITS team both from MCA-N and the Directorate of Veterinary Service (DVS), thereafter a NamLITS team trained all DVS personnel. A total of 580,067 cattle were tagged during Phase Two.
After Phase Two a need to continue tagging as not all cattle were tagged in all regions was realised. This necessitated the implementation of Phase Three, which was carried out last year. This was one of the difficult one as most of the animals moved from their original establishment to other places due to drought, which was looming last year. However, it is estimated that over 90% of cattle in the NCAs are tagged at the moment. After the tagging campaign, the NamLITS team embarked on the training of all NamLITS users in the north.
To date all clerical and supportive staff (with computer knowledge) are trained and are able to work with NamLITS database. During implementation, seven offices were connected to the NamLITS database. One of the major part for implementation of NamLITS 2 was the aspect of unification with NamLITS 1 (which was running on the south of the VCF), which successfully took place in October 2013.
The extension of NamLITS to the northern communal area (north of the veterinary cordon fence) is one of the important and big projects, which the Ministry in partnership with the funding partner (MCA-N) implemented. Some of the challenges encountered during the implementation of NamLITS NCA are:
- acceptance of the system by the farmers – at first not all farmers were willing to accept the system more especially in the regions notably Kunene.
- challenges of movement of animals in the communal areas – the control of animal movements in the communal areas is a challenge as there are no demarcations between establishments/holdings
- personnel – to implement a project of this magnitude you need enough staff to carry out all planned activities. In this case the Ministry has to employ occasional employees, which is not the best option as once they are given permanent employment by other organisations they can drop out at any given time
- internet connectivity – for this system to operate smoothly, internet connectivity in each office is required however in some of the places there is no internet access at all.
- transport