Capacity development and knowledge systems
Training design and institutional capacity development for veterinary services, field teams, and public agencies, plus technical reports and policy briefs.
Read moreAnimal health, One Health, and pandemic preparedness
One Health consulting for veterinary services, surveillance, and pandemic preparedness.
Livestock Futures works with veterinary authorities, laboratories, and development partners across Africa to strengthen the animal health systems that sit at the front line of both livestock productivity and outbreak detection.
Most emerging infectious diseases have an animal origin, which puts veterinary services in a role their budgets rarely reflect. The same field officers expected to support production are also the earliest realistic detection layer for events with public health consequences. Where that layer is thin, outbreaks are found late, and the cost of the response rises accordingly.
One Health is often presented as a coordination problem between ministries. Coordination matters, but it does not substitute for capability. A memorandum of understanding between animal health, human health, and environment agencies delivers nothing if the reporting chain from a village to a national laboratory is unreliable, or if the laboratory cannot confirm a diagnosis within a useful timeframe.
Working on the parts of the system that actually constrain it
Assessments repeatedly surface the same bottlenecks: passive surveillance that depends on reporting by people with no incentive to report; laboratory capacity concentrated centrally while samples originate peripherally; sample transport that is nobody's explicit responsibility; and information systems that collect data upwards without ever returning anything useful downwards.
These are unglamorous problems, and they are the ones that determine whether a system detects an event in time. Work is scoped to address them directly rather than to add another coordination layer above them.
- Veterinary service capacity assessment and strengthening
- Risk-based surveillance design and animal health information systems
- Laboratory capacity development and diagnostic systems
- Pandemic preparedness and response frameworks
- Field-level reporting chains and sample referral pathways
Transboundary and emerging disease preparedness
Preparedness is tested by specific diseases, not by generic plans. Training and framework development therefore work through the diseases a given country is genuinely exposed to, using the trade, movement, and production patterns that shape its risk.
Practically, that means contingency planning that names who does what in the first 72 hours, and simulation exercises that reveal which of those assumptions do not hold.
- Avian influenza preparedness and response
- African swine fever prevention and control planning
- Transboundary animal disease contingency planning
- Emergency response training and simulation design
- Zoonotic disease prioritisation with human health counterparts
Who this is for
National veterinary services and chief veterinary officers; regional bodies and continental institutions; development partners financing animal health or pandemic preparedness portfolios; laboratory networks; and research programmes needing One Health technical input.
Common questions
Questions we are asked about this work
What does a One Health consultant actually do on an assignment?
Typically: assess the current capability of veterinary and related services against a recognised framework, identify which gaps genuinely constrain detection and response, and produce a prioritised, costed set of actions the institution can implement with the resources it has or can plausibly raise.
Is this work only relevant during an outbreak?
The opposite. Capability that has not been built before an event cannot be built during one. The most valuable work happens in the quiet periods, when surveillance, laboratory, and workforce capacity can be strengthened deliberately.
Which regions does Livestock Futures work in?
The primary focus is Africa, with East Africa as the main operating base. Assignments elsewhere are considered where the systems questions are similar. [VERIFY: confirm the specific countries you want listed here.]
Related services
Often scoped alongside this work
Trade access, traceability, and risk analysis
Consulting on livestock traceability, electronic certification, commodity-based trade, and risk analysis for authorities seeking export market access.
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