New Guide Charts Path for Conserving Africa's Genetically Diverse Livestock

Africa hosts roughly one-third of the world's total livestock population and the greatest diversity of domestic animal breeds found anywhere on the planet. Its approximately 150 to 180 indigenous cattle breeds, 289 goat breeds, 363 sheep breeds, 126 poultry breeds, and 94 dromedary breeds have been shaped by thousands of years of adaptation to heat, drought, disease, and variable feed availability. They represent an enormous reservoir of genetic traits that are genuinely difficult to replicate through conventional breeding - and many of them are disappearing.

A new open-access book launched in Nairobi by the African Animal Breeding Network (AABNet) and partners aims to provide the scientific and practical foundation for reversing that trend. African Livestock Genetic Resources and Sustainable Breeding Strategies: Unlocking a Treasure Trove and Guide for Improved Productivity, released in collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH), and the African Union's Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), consolidates decades of research on livestock genetics, breeding, and adaptation strategies across the continent.

Why Indigenous Breeds Are Being Lost

The primary driver of breed loss is indiscriminate crossbreeding with exotic, high-yield breeds. The logic is straightforward in the short term: exotic breeds often produce more milk or meat per animal under favorable conditions. The problem is that those conditions - adequate nutrition, veterinary access, temperature control - are not consistently available across the smallholder production systems that dominate African agriculture. Indigenous breeds have evolved traits that exotic breeds lack: tolerance for trypanosomiasis and other endemic diseases, ability to maintain body condition on poor-quality forage, and reproductive performance under heat stress. When these traits are diluted through unmanaged crossbreeding, they may be permanently lost.

The emissions dimension adds further complexity. Indigenous breeds in smallholder systems currently produce 2.1 to 5.0 kilograms of CO2-equivalent per kilogram of product - closer to global averages - partly because lower productivity means fewer kilograms of product to spread emissions across. But the book argues that improving genetics, animal health, and management efficiency is a more effective climate strategy than replacing indigenous breeds with exotic ones: productivity gains reduce emissions intensity without sacrificing the adaptive traits that make these animals viable under African conditions.

What the Book Proposes

The publication emphasizes that effective breeding programs in Africa must be built around farmer priorities, not just production metrics. Smallholder farmers make livestock management decisions based on a complex set of values that include social function, risk tolerance, and market access alongside raw productivity. Breeding objectives that optimize for milk yield alone, without accounting for the disease burden that high-production animals face in low-input environments, frequently disappoint in field implementation even when they succeed in controlled trials.

The framework outlined in the book centers on four priorities. First, multi-country genetic evaluation - building the cross-border data infrastructure to assess breed performance across diverse environments rather than within isolated national programs. Second, professional capacity building - training the animal breeders, geneticists, and extension workers needed to implement and maintain breeding programs at scale. Third, advocacy and business development - making the economic and development case for advanced genetic tools to governments, donors, and the private sector. Fourth, collaboration and partnership - scaling programs that individual countries or organizations cannot sustain independently.

The Organizations Behind the Launch

Professor Appolinaire Djikeng, Director General of ILRI, framed the publication as treating genetic diversity as a climate and development tool rather than heritage alone. ILRI, headquartered in Nairobi with operations across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is one of the world's leading livestock research institutions and has been involved in characterizing African breed diversity for decades. Its involvement in the publication signals institutional commitment to the framework beyond the initial launch.

Professor Mizeck Chagunda, Director of CTLGH, described indigenous breeds as the backbone of climate-resilient African agriculture and emphasized that protecting them through targeted breeding is essential for both livelihoods and climate adaptation. Dr. Huyam Salih of AU-IBAR positioned the effort as a matter of climate and development security, calling for strategic investments in genetic characterization and farmer-centered approaches.

What Implementation Requires

The book is a reference and strategy document, not an implementation plan for any specific country or breed. Translating its framework into functioning national breeding programs will require resources, institutional stability, and sustained political commitment that vary considerably across African countries. The human capacity gaps in genetic evaluation are significant: many countries lack the trained personnel and data infrastructure to run rigorous genetic improvement programs even where political will exists.

The multi-country genetic evaluation priority directly addresses this by distributing the analytical burden across institutions rather than requiring each country to build full capacity independently. Whether that kind of cross-border coordination can be sustained through political transitions, funding cycles, and competing institutional priorities is an implementation challenge that science alone cannot resolve.

The publication is available open access, ensuring that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners across the continent can access the knowledge base without cost barriers. The book represents a starting point for a more coordinated approach to African livestock genetic resources - one that treats the continent's breed diversity as an asset to be strategically developed rather than a baseline to be replaced.

The Data Infrastructure Gap

One of the most concrete barriers to effective livestock genetic improvement across Africa is the absence of consistent phenotypic and genomic data. Genetic evaluation - the process of estimating the breeding value of individual animals - requires performance records collected across large numbers of animals over multiple generations. In most African countries, the infrastructure for systematic recording of milk yields, growth rates, disease incidence, and reproductive performance in indigenous breeds is limited or nonexistent. Without this data, even well-designed breeding programs cannot identify which animals carry the genetic variants most worth propagating.

Building this data infrastructure requires investment in both technology and people: weighing scales, milk meters, ear tags, and mobile data collection systems at the farm level; database management and genetic analysis capacity at national and regional levels; and extension workers who can explain the value of recording to smallholder farmers who have rarely seen a direct return on compliance with monitoring requirements. The book advocates for multi-country collaboration as a way to pool data across borders and build the statistical power needed for robust genetic evaluations - an approach that has succeeded in other regions but requires sustained political coordination that has historically been difficult to maintain across African borders.