Leapfrogging Possibilities For Sustainable Consumption and ...

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4.3.2 Africa There are small or large-scale implementation of new technologies and ideas in different parts of Africa. The following are examples from different countries covering livestock, ICT Livestock tracking Herders in Angola, Botswana and South Africa track their cattle via GPS. Compared to traditional herding this tracking system is a big leap with significant socio-economic benefits. It helps avoid the economic loss attributed to cattle rustling related conflicts. For instance, between 1999 and 2002, cattle raids in Kenya drained the national economy hugely by 15 billion Kenyan Shillings (225 million US$) 52 . The system provides many benefits for pastoralists, veterinary officers and government authorities. It can be used to locate lost or stolen cattle, and to monitor and manage disease outbreaks. Botswana is using the system to ensure the long-term security of its beef export market and offers an additional marketing edge, enabling the country to compete worldwide for new export orders. Livestock production has a share of 80 percent the major income earner of the agricultural GDP in the country. Second to diamond, beef is an important commodity Botswana has been exporting to EU. The use of the digital animal Identification system has reduced cases of livestock theft that had earlier threatened Botswana’s lucrative EU beef export market. The new system is a complete departure from the traditional 'hot iron' branding and ear tagging that have little or none deterrent to cattle thieves. The Livestock Identification and Trace-Back System (LITS) project is implemented by the Department of Animal Production, Ministry of Agriculture. From 2002-2004 alone, Botswana has significantly reduced incidences of cattle thefts by at least 60%. The digital ID system uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which is safe, environmentally friendly, and tamperproof to identify individual livestock throughout the country. The reticular bolus that the animal swallows contains a RFID microchip, which is coated by a very hard ceramic. The bolus has neither moving parts nor a battery and is inert, safe and does not react with stomach acids and enzymes.The bolus is technically superior to other micro chips such as injected micro-chip that is cheap but difficult to read, recover after slaughter and faces a likelihood of ban on their use by the EU in the coming years as it can easily find its way in the meat. Introduction of this system has greatly eliminated commercialization of cattle rustling in Botswana. Pilot testing of the same system is going on in areas of pastoralists in Kenya, to individually identify a livestock, its owner, district, movement permits, and vaccination records among a handful of other useful data. Integrating the bolus system with satellite tracking technology using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) would not only be individually and digitally identified but would also be traced to ascertain where it is at a given point in time. Implementation of this digital livestock identification system in East Africa will open up access to important livestock markets such as EU Other than managing cattle records and 52 ITDG (2004) 34
deterring cattle thefts, The EU beef market regulation requires that imported beef be traceable from the export slaughter facilities to the individual animal from which the meat came from. This regulation was made in response to the mad cow and foot and mouth diseases outbreaks in Europe and other parts of the world. The costs for introducing LITS that covers about 80 percent of the total cattle population were about 26 million US$. Since 2005, annual costs to ensure the maintenance and upgrading of the system occur, which are estimated to be about 2.3 million US$ each year. The environmental benefits of this system are associated to saving on the natural environment as a result of sound management of resources and avoided conflicts. ICT Bypassing landlines, cell phones in rural Ethiopia are already improving households’ access to information regarding commodity prices and marketing of goods and services in neighbouring villages. Ethiopia has embarked on four initiatives • WoredaNet: a government network which would link nearly 600 local districts (`woreda') and 11 regional government offices across the country with each other and with the federal government headquarters in the nation's capital, Addis Ababa. The project would provide these offices with videoconferencing, e-mail, Internet access, and file sharing capabilities-creating a foundation for e- government. • SchoolNet: an education network which would provide more than 450 secondary educational institutions with access to general ICT, e-mail, and the Internet. Most importantly, though, it would allow these institutions to receive streamed Internetand broadcast TV-based educational content from media agencies-creating a foundation for e-learning. • AgriNet: an agriculture network which would link more than 30 research and operational agricultural centers to stimulate the growth of this cornerstone of the economy. • HealthNet: a healthcare network connecting all major referral hospitals around Ethiopia and form the basis for a nationwide telemedicine infrastructure. For the dominant part of country, this leap is from nothing to ICT networked information sharing system (see Box 1). Socio-economically this is resulting in saving the meagre economic resources of the country by reducing consumption of imported transport fuel which is eating up the lion’s share of export revenues. Environmentally, the reduction in transport emissions can be mentioned. Solar Power There is a successful solar-generated electricity project implemented in a desert grasslands rural part of the Jigawa State, Northern Nigeria 53 . The project has garnered a great deal of media attention both within Nigeria and internationally with coverage from CNN. It has been visited by the Governors of surrounding states, by the former Nigerian President Obasanjo. 53 Solar Electric Light Fund (2007) 35
Page 1 and 2: Task Force “Cooperation with Afri
Page 3 and 4: 6.2.3 Lack of institutional capacit
Page 5 and 6: need to consider leapfrogging possi
Page 7 and 8: household and government level resu
Page 9 and 10: PART I - CONTEXTUAL DESCRIPTIION 2
Page 11 and 12: Table 1: Agricultural Indicators by
Page 13 and 14: The Reference scenario assumes cont
Page 15 and 16: primarily along waterways. Associat
Page 17 and 18: Figure 6: Water Supply and Sanitati
Page 19 and 20: Figure 8: Malaria affected areas in
Page 21 and 22: Figure 9: Threatened and endangered
Page 23 and 24: 3.2 Current activities related to S
Page 25 and 26: the context-relevance of SCP to Afr
Page 27 and 28: PART II- SCP AND LEAPFROGGIING 4 Le
Page 29 and 30: African countries face the challeng
Page 31 and 32: Biofuel The development of large-sc
Page 33: To appreciate the significance of t
Page 37 and 38: Solar-powered micro-enterprise buil
Page 39 and 40: 5 SCP Areas attractive for leapfrog
Page 41 and 42: 5.2.3 Biotechnology Development of
Page 43 and 44: Sanitation access Sanitation Techno
Page 45 and 46: Figure 12: Proportion of Children C
Page 47 and 48: programme is associated with the go
Page 49 and 50: 7.3.3 South-South Cooperation Coope
Page 51 and 52: this temptation of going for quick
Page 53 and 54: initiatives. The role of developmen
Page 55 and 56: http://www.uneca.org/csd/CSD4_Repor

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