20 years of learning and progress
Over the last 20 years, the Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines (GALVmed) has learned many operational lessons through its various projects and programmes. At a strategic level, the top five lessons relate to a cohesive approach to delivering our mission, which is providing access to effective animal health inputs for the millions of small-scale livestock producers (SSPs) whose livelihoods depend on livestock.
1. We frame everything we do in terms of developing functioning animal health markets
It is through these markets that essential inputs, like livestock vaccines, become widely and sustainably available. From an internal perspective, this requires us to plan holistically and interactively across our R&D, Commercial Development and Enabling Environment functions. We have learnt that by working collaboratively with both public authorities and the private sector we can build a common vision and a coordinated plan for developing these markets. This approach allows GALVmed to leverage considerably greater amounts of external resources from public and private stakeholders and thereby achieve our ambitious goals.
2. We focus on a few specific geographic areas
Establishing functioning markets requires a significant concerted effort. In our earlier programmes, we had market development activities in nearly 20 countries. This meant that it was impossible to engage all the key public and private stakeholders. Results were widely dispersed and market momentum could only build up in a few specific cases. Our current work is now largely focused on four countries, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ethiopia. Success in these exemplar countries will show which approaches and principles can then be applied elsewhere in Africa to attain similar results.
3. We take a portfolio approach
Dealing with single products or sub-groups of products is a piecemeal approach. It does not reflect the market realities of our commercial partners or the needs of the public stakeholders and farmers in the livestock value chain. Establishing a functioning market requires a comprehensive portfolio approach so that common barriers and shared opportunities can be collectively addressed. This requires an operational converging of our numerous long-running programmes covering a range of ruminant vaccines and key parasiticides.
4. We work towards a definitive endpoint
At some point in the progression to a functioning market, sufficient market momentum and stakeholder investment, both public and private, will ensure that ongoing organic growth will continue without any further GALVmed intervention. This is the GALVmed jump-off point. It is a critical planning point and ensures that GALVmed and its partners are actively working towards, and delivering, a sustainable programme of work with a definitive endpoint in sight.
5. We require patient investors/funders
It takes time to develop functioning markets. We have been enormously fortunate in that our two key funders, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Gates Foundation, are committed to the long-term impact that animal health markets will deliver in Africa. Ultimately, it is through this long-term support that GALVmed’s mission will be achieved.
Looking back at the past 20 years also offers an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come, what we have achieved and the impact of this work. We explore this journey in our 20-year report Healthy Livestock, Better Lives, which brings together some of the key milestones and achievements along the way.
Blog written by Neil Gammon, Business Development Director at GALVmed