Tag: Data

Quantifying our impact: A modelling framework to estimate the economic benefits of our initiatives

Posted on by team galvmed

As an organisation with a wide geographic footprint across Africa and South Asia, it is challenging to assess the impact of our programmes at scale using rigorous field studies. However, together with our wider network of funders and partners, we need to know that the investments we are making are producing productivity and income benefits for small-scale livestock producers (SSPs) that warrant the financial investment in these initiatives.

In this regard, we partnered with Supporting Evidence based Interventions-Livestock (SEBI-L) to develop a model for practical use for our market development programmes. The model is used to estimate the economic impact of the initiatives on SSPs, prioritise product development decisions, and to direct market development effort. Furthermore, these analyses can be used to advocate for further investment in the SSP animal health sector.

In a paper published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, the model was applied to estimate the impact of products sold during GALVmed’s People and Livelihoods 2 (PL2) programme. The PL2 programme, which was implemented between 2014 and 2017 in Africa and South Asia, supported the production and distribution of poultry anthelminthics and vaccines against Newcastle disease, fowl pox, sheep and goat pox, peste des petits ruminants, and East Coast fever.

The modelling framework

The model is conceptualised in terms of three components:

  • Products: this includes sales of products and the number of animals that are expected to be treated with the product (depending on the different pack sizes).
  • Disease epidemiology: this comprises the conditions that are treated, number of infections, mortality rates and impact on growth rate.
  • Economics: this comprises losses from reduced productivity and losses from livestock mortality.

The economic impacts from mortality and growth inhibition are estimated at the individual animal level for poultry, small ruminants, and cattle. As SSPs are using veterinary products to prevent or minimise loss due to disease, we model the key ways in which those losses are experienced by SSPs and estimate the proportion of those losses that are averted by using specific animal health products. By factoring in the cost of the product and the number of doses sold, we give the net economic benefit (NEB).

The model can be adapted to incorporate new products and parameters as needed. The framework will evolve as GALVmed initiatives change over time.

The results

The model estimates a total NEB of $105.1M to the 3,664,114 customers reached by the PL2 initiatives. This translates to $139.9M in present value, and $37.97 on average per customer, many of whom were small scale poultry producers.

Within Sub-Saharan Africa, the greatest net economic benefit was realized from vaccines against East Coast fever and Newcastle disease, while in South Asia, peste des petits ruminants and Newcastle disease vaccines had the greatest net economic benefits.

The paper with the complete results and analysis is available here: A high level estimation of the net economic benefits to small-scale livestock producers arising from animal health product distribution initiatives.

By understanding how GALVmed’s interventions translate into economic benefit for SSPs, we can continuously refine and optimise our approaches, ultimately driving a greater positive change in the economic progression and well-being of SSPs across Africa and South Asia.

This blog was written by the M&E team.

Barriers to livestock health market: Intelligence

Posted on by team galvmed

A thriving, sustainable animal health inputs (AHI) industry is what we need in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) such as those in Africa. This is where value chain players operate profitably to get the products and services to the farmer who is the ultimate beneficiary. In these regions, a large proportion of agriculture production is contributed by small-scale farmers. According to Africa Development Bank Group, 75% of production and employment in East Africa is contributed by small-holder farming. Unfortunately, while progress has been made in other sectors such as trade and services, agriculture still lags behind.

The barriers to trade in AHI have led to LMICs markets being insufficiently attractive to sustain the case for investment in the development of targeted products and markets by multinational companies, which typically have research and development capacity. In entities that exist to gain their shareholders a return on equity, there is competition for capital which tends to be concentrated in the most profitable areas. Some of the barriers to trade in LMICs include incomplete market information which hinders the sizing of the opportunity, packaging not small enough to suit the predominant small-scale producer segment, presence of poor-quality products due to reasons such as counterfeiting, incomplete or inefficient distribution networks that don’t optimally reach producers, cold chain issues due to energy and infrastructure inadequacy, demand aggregation to sustain large scale manufacture, or development of veterinary service resources among others.

GALVmed through the implementation of its new 2030 commercial development strategy, is looking to work with partners to address some of these barriers through bespoke platforms, one of which being the Market Intelligence Platform (MIP).

The AHI’s current size and future potential in sub-Saharan Africa must be better understood. With a significant lack of data, the industry tends to rely on best estimates and use incomplete and unreliable information. This is augmented with substantial levels of guesswork and approximations. The situation is highly undesirable and harmful for two reasons:

One, the industry’s best estimates can be wildly inaccurate and tend to be significant underestimates. For example, a comprehensive, bottom-up assessment of the Kenyan market by AgNexus Africa has recently valued the market at $110M p.a. Previous industry best estimates had typically placed the market in the region of $45 – $50 M p.a.

Secondly, industry investments reflect the degree of confidence in the underlying markets. The need for more reliable data for the African market greatly amplifies the uncertainty around this market, and industry investments in the region consequently suffer.

The outcome of this information shortfall contributes to a significantly reduced animal health industry investment in Africa. Many manufacturers either avoid the region entirely or limit and drip-feed their investments. The consequences are felt not only in the manufacturer’s marketing and distribution activities but also in R&D, where it is extremely difficult to justify development projects for African-specific products. For African small-scale livestock producers (SSP), this has important and far-reaching consequences. Product availability, product quality, and product prices are all negatively impacted. This translates to poorer animal health outcomes, lower SSP livestock productivity, and poorer SSP livelihoods.

For these reasons, the proposed Market Intelligence Platform which aims at both sizing the current and estimating the future markets through techniques such as advanced analytics will enhance animal health market transparency, improve decision-making, reduce business risk, indirectly improve market efficiency, and promote access to animal health markets. This will contribute to a more developed industry in the coming years.

Written by Tom Osebe, Senior Manager of Commercial Development & Impact, Africa.

Using vignettes for gender research

Posted on by team galvmed

Gender research can be used to understand community perceptions of social and gender norms. To better understand these perceptions in the context of poultry intensification, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in collaboration with GALVmed, recently carried out a rapid gender landscaping analysis in Tanzania, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe using a unique method – the vignette. The landscaping analysis was designed to inform the gender context underpinning the PRomoting and Enabling Vaccination Efficiently, Now and Tomorrow (PREVENT) project in these countries.

A fictitious story about a chicken-keeper named Amina is a tool for conversations about social norms

The vignette approach involves reading out a fictitious story involving a main protagonist in a focus group setting and leaving the end of the story blank for the group to comment on ‘what happens next’ as a tool for a conversation about social and gender norms. As the landscaping study was designed to understand community perceptions of women’s involvement in poultry intensification, the vignette in this study was of a chicken keeper named Amina, whose poultry business was flourishing. Amina’s husband approaches her and wants to discuss her business. Responses from the community as to what happened next ranged widely. The following are some examples:

Amina was talented in chicken keeping as she started before she was married and benefited from it. I believe her husband wanted to give her knowledge on the business as well as to congratulate her because what she does is beneficial to the family and the whole society.

– Woman in Tanzania.

There’s no mention on the story where Amina’s business takes a dwindling turn, but it is forever growing, which excites me a lot. So, when the husband wants to talk to Amina about her business, there’s an element of knowledge capacitation the husband wants to offer to her so the business grows to greater heights.

– Man in Zimbabwe.

Maybe the man is jealous she is doing better than him and not getting her attention and other men are eyeing her; she is getting more money. He might think maybe one day she will not be submissive to him. He is afraid.

– Woman in Nigeria.

Through the vignette, we were able to gather information about potential consequences from husbands, family members, and community members when a woman intensifies her poultry production at the expense of her care duties. This includes responsibilities to the family, children, community, or breaking social norms such as speaking to male customers at night. Such consequences include shaming, social ostracization, gossip, jealousy, marital conflict, possibly even domestic violence, or divorce. While support from a husband and family members can lead to growth of the business, as the husband becomes more involved, there is a question about whether women’s ability to control resources and benefits diminishes.

The results of this study raise some interesting questions for the PREVENT project and the gender consequences of poultry intensification. GALVmed will be using these findings to inform a gender intentional approach to understanding, tracking, and communicating the gendered effects of the project.

This blog was written by Katharine Tjasink and co-authored by Zoë Campbell (ILRI)

Learning lessons at GALVmed

Posted on by team galvmed

The collection and analysis of data allow organisations to develop and implement impactful and evidence-based strategies. GALVmed’s Commercial Development and Impact Function is committed to a developmental approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), which means that we use rapid learning to improve a project programme or affirm the need for a change of course.

To be truly developmental, this learning needs to feed back in a systematic way into our organisation. How do we do that? We use a framework for lessons learning to ensure that the lessons are integrated back into GALVmed. The Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) framework, developed and used by USAID, is a useful approach that we have adapted to frame our learning process. USAID defines CLA as “a set of processes and activities that help ensure programming is coordinated, grounded in evidence, and adjusted as necessary to remain effective throughout implementation” (ADS 201, 2016).

CLA is based in the understanding that development projects operate in complex systems, which shift over time. In this changing landscape, the objectives that we set out at the beginning of a project or programme can be affected over a three or five year period of performance. Responding in an adaptive manner ensures that we keep moving towards having a positive impact. The adaptive decisions we make must be based in evidence, which is why we are integrating processes for CLA into the beginning of our projects or programmes and adjusting these throughout the project or programme life cycle. Essentially, this is an approach to learning that fits in perfectly with our developmental approach.

There are three main steps in our learning process:

  1. The first step is to accurately define and diagnose the problem (or best practice). Some problems are logistical or operational and have easy fixes. But these, while important, do not usually make or break a project. Others are deeper and more complex and require a lot more thought and reflection to unpack them and to understand how to respond to them. Sometimes there are multiple causes to a problem, with some of them being root causes.
  2. The second step is to categorise the problem (or best practice). The use of categories ensures key information is not missed and helps to focus our thinking on lessons. To ensure consistency across projects, there are standard categories for each project and additional categories specific to a project can be added as needed.
  3. The third step is to define a road map for the way forward. This involves defining what action needs to take place, and how to know when that action has succeeded. At the end of a lessons learning exercise, there should be a road map that takes us from a lesson to action and adaptation.

Throughout this process, active collaboration is key to ensuring that we view our lessons from multiple perspectives and that our stakeholders have a voice.

This blog was written by Katharine Tjasink