They were meeting at the Second Ministerial Deep Dive on Livestock, convened by the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and hosted by AGRA at the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026. The theme was "Scaling What Works through Regional Value Chains, Partnership and Investment".
Ministers and representatives from Nigeria, Uganda, Niger, Mali, Malawi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia took part, along with the Honourable Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi, former President of Botswana, and leaders from financial institutions, industry, and development partners.
The session followed the first Ministerial Deep Dive, held in Dakar in 2025, where ministers from nine countries asked that the discussion continue and move from dialogue to action.
Africa's livestock paradox
At the meeting, AU-IBAR Director Dr Huyam Salih described what she called Africa's livestock paradox. The continent holds about 73 per cent of the world's camels, 45 per cent of its sheep and goats and 34 per cent of its cattle. Livestock contributes some USD 210 billion to gross domestic product, between 30 and 40 per cent of agricultural GDP, and supports close to 800 million producers, pastoralists, traders and processors.
At the same time, between 90 and 95 per cent of the milk, beef and poultry consumed in Africa is sourced from outside it, and formal intra-African trade stands at about 16 per cent.
"That gap is what this vision is built to close," Dr Salih said.
She told the meeting that Africa is not short of animals, water, demand or entrepreneurs. What is missing is the connective tissue between them: aggregation and processing linked to production zones, sanitary and phytosanitary systems trusted across borders, affordable corridors and cold chains, harmonised regulation, and investment opportunities packaged in a form financiers can assess. Investors decline African livestock and aquatic value chains because they cannot see the data, the standards or the pipeline, she said, rather than because they doubt the resource.
A ten-year programme rather than a series of projects
Much of AU-IBAR’s contribution at the session focused on the Integrated Regional Livestock Value Chain (IRLVC) Programme, the AU-IBAR flagship that runs to 2035 and reports through the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) biennial review. The programme already supports more than 30 regional projects, including a dairy market programme in East Africa and a regional poultry health programme in West Africa, with partners such as the European Union, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Bank.
Dr Salih said short-term, fragmented projects had not delivered the resilient value chains or the regional markets Africa needs. Under the IRLVC, projects enter as financing instalments of a standing ten-year programme, and are not treated as substitutes for it. That, she said, is how results survive the end of a grant.
The programme is measured on two outcomes: investment unlocked, and trade increased, both inter-regional and intra-regional. Convening, coordination, data and capacity work all serve those two. Phase 1 targets a 10 to 15 per cent increase in the value and volume of formal intra-African trade in supported corridors by 2029. AU-IBAR analysis indicates that a coordinated, private-sector-led approach could achieve up to five times more value from the sector.
The value chains were selected with the Regional Economic Communities, drawing on the results and lessons of Live2Africa. They cover red meat and leather in IGAD, COMESA, SADC and the Sahel; dairy in the East African Community and the Arab Maghreb Union; poultry meat in ECOWAS; and eggs in ECCAS.
Dr Salih set out how the roles are divided. Member States set priorities and own delivery. The Regional Economic Communities coordinate cross-border markets. AU-IBAR convenes, aligns policy, builds the sector fact base, packages investable business cases and connects investment partners to regional opportunities. She described the Bureau as an orchestrator and co-lead rather than a national implementer.
The IRLVC is one of four AU-IBAR flagship programmes running to 2035. The others are the eradication of peste des petits ruminants, strengthened animal health, One Health and welfare services, and the transformation of fisheries and aquaculture. The decade is sequenced in three stages: foundations and proof to 2029, scaling to 2032 and consolidation to 2035.
What ministers committed to
AU-IBAR asked the Ministers to advance three things. The first was political leadership, in the form of a ministerial mandate for cross-border corridor cooperation, policy convergence, removing non-tariff barriers, and coordinated investment in public goods. The second was financing alignment, with governments, development finance institutions, banks and partners putting public, catalytic and blended instruments behind credible regional investment propositions. The third was industry co-investment, with the private sector bringing anchor investment, technology, operating capability and market demand.
Ministers left with commitments rather than a joint statement. They agreed to pursue investment and financing tailored to livestock, break down cross-border barriers to trade and disease, build the data and traceability systems needed to show what is working, and raise livestock's institutional standing within government.
Five priorities were agreed for follow-up:
The commitments are to be tracked and reviewed at next year's Ministerial.
"We already know what works. The task now is coordinating policy and trade across borders so proven livestock solutions can scale from one country to a continent," Dr Salih said. "That is what the Integrated Regional Livestock Value Chain programme is built to do, and what today’s commitments move us closer to."
Dairy as this year's case study
Dairy was used as the illustrative value chain for the session, the first of several proof points the platform intends to examine in future editions. Ethiopia's experience anchored the discussion. Milk production there rose from 7.1 billion litres in 2022 to 15.7 billion litres in 2025/26, an increase of 122 per cent, supported by the government's Yelemat Tirufat initiative, more than 36,000 new dairy villages, 5,000 dairy clusters and new cross-border trade agreements. Ethiopia's representative was candid that feed production, although it has more than doubled over the same period, remains the main constraint on further growth.
A standing platform for delivery
Every country that took the floor asked for the Ministerial Platform to continue. The session recommended formalising it as the political and learning home for delivering the Integrated Regional Livestock Value Chain Programme, anchored in the annual Africa Food Systems Forum and building towards the First African Union Summit on Animal Resources Transformation. This would give ministers a standing role in continental delivery.
The three commitments made in Dakar in 2025 were reported as met. The session has become a permanent feature of the Forum; it now connects to continental frameworks rather than duplicating them, reflected in this year's co-convening with AU-IBAR under CAADP and Agenda 2063; and it runs on peer-to-peer country case studies, as Ethiopia's dairy experience did this year.
Earlier in the Forum, Dr Salih took the same argument to the Big Bets roundtable on Africa’s food systems in 2046. Africa cannot be food-sovereign while it imports the great majority of its animal protein, she said, and the continent is importing protein and exporting the jobs that should come with it. She called for animal-source foods to be named explicitly in the CAADP-to-2046 proposition, with livestock, fisheries and aquaculture treated as a pillar of food sovereignty, and for commitments to be written down, tracked and reported at each CAADP biennial review.
"A twenty-year vision without a two-year ledger is a conversation, not a strategy," she said.
She closed the Ministerial by returning to the invitation to partners. Africa has the livestock assets, the growing demand and an expanding continental market, she said, and AU-IBAR is ready to convene the partnership that turns them into integrated markets, investment and value retained on the continent.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The African Union – Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR).
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