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Drought emergency response to protect the livelihood of vulnerable households and populations in drought-affected woredas of the Tigray region

Tags
Countries Ethiopia
Start date 30/09/2008
End date 15/06/2010
Status Completed
Recipient / Target Areas Ethiopia
Budget 697 872 USD
Project Code OSRO/ETH/812/CHA
Objective / Goal To reduce the vulnerability of targeted drought affected households in the Tigray region through the provision of veterinary drugs and vaccines and the provision of survival animal feed.
Beneficiaries 96 915
Activities

The overall goal was to protect the livelihood assets of vulnerable drought-affected households, while increasing their resilience to future shocks.  The two main objectives were to:

  • provide basic livestock health interventions to protect the livelihood assets of the community and support the establishment of community animal health workers (CAHWs) linked to animal health posts and improve and sustain community-based animal health services; and
  • save the lives of core breeding stock through the provision of survival feed. The survival feed was planned for distribution to 12 900 heads of cattle, while the animal health service support was to reach 155 067 heads of livestock (including the animals provided with survival feed). 

Key activities included:

  • Provision of livestock survival feed: through the project, 40 000 bales of grass hay and 3 440 quintals of concentrate feed were distributed to 6 450 households in the three drought-affected woredas.
  • Strengthening the community-based animal health delivery system: FAO organized two training activities that benefited 43 members of partner organizations from the region and target woredas. A training session on survival feeding and feed resource management took place between 31 March and 4 April 2009 in Mekele and benefited 30 livestock production staff. Its main focus was the efficient use of locally available feed for survival feeding. 
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Challenges and lessons learned

Three main lessons or good practices can be observed from the project:
  • Beneficiary targeting. As explained in the project document, funds allocated for survival feed were sufficient only to cover the needs of 30 percent of the drought-affected livestock-owning population in the region. Consultation meetings with the community and the strict definition of and adherence to set criteria for targeting beneficiaries, favoring the most vulnerable groups, facilitated the community’s acceptance of the project and overcame the challenge.
  • Inter-institutional synergy. In the past, feed for drought-affected areas was transported from the central highlands to feed deficit areas. The cost of transporting bulky fibrous feed to the remote drought-affected woredas targeted under this project would have been extremely high. Instead, REST mobilized young adults to obtain hay from better-off areas in the region and used its own means of transport to deliver the cured hay to where it was needed. Such inter-institutional synergy should be emulated in similar emergency response projects in the future.
  • Use of locally available cactus forage. At the time of project proposal development, it was assumed that crop residues would supply part of the fibrous feed needs of the survival feed intervention. The unexpectedly low local availability of crop residues, however, forced the project team to seek alternatives. Funds destined for the purchase of urea were used instead to procure additional concentrate feed and increase the use of locally available cactus forage. Feeding livestock the moist cactus forage, along with hay and concentrate feed, extended the survival feeding period while preventing animal health problems commonly encountered when livestock are fed only on cactus. The practice also helped economize the use of the scarce concentrate feed.