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The inaugural African Pastoral Markets Forum ended on Friday with African governments, development financiers and private sector leaders shifting from dialogue to action, adopting a ministerial communiqué and committing to implement reforms aimed at transforming the continent’s pastoral livestock economy into a major engine of trade, investment, food security and industrialisation.
Closing the five-day forum, Director of the African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR), Dr. Huyam Salih, said the gathering had secured an unprecedented continental mandate to reposition pastoral livestock from a traditionally overlooked sector to a strategic economic asset central to Africa’s development agenda.
“This Forum has positioned pastoral livestock as a strategic economic asset for food security, jobs, trade, resilience, value addition and regional integration,” Salih told delegates.
She said the forum succeeded in bringing together policymakers, pastoral producers, financial institutions, development finance institutions (DFIs), investors, commercial enterprises and development partners to address the policy, financing and market barriers that have long constrained Africa’s livestock economy.
According to her, the discussions moved beyond identifying challenges to developing practical solutions capable of integrating pastoral producers into structured markets through aggregation, processing, logistics, finance and higher-value regional and international markets.
Salih said the ministerial segment provided the political momentum needed to move the agenda forward, with ministers committing themselves to lowering the cost of formal livestock trade, expanding private sector participation, mobilising investment and strengthening regional infrastructure that supports livestock commerce.
“The Ministerial Segment has given this agenda the political weight it requires,” she said.
She identified three major outcomes of the forum: commitment to policy reforms that facilitate livestock trade; agreement to develop innovative financing mechanisms for pastoral enterprises; and recognition of livestock corridors, water infrastructure, animal health systems, logistics, energy, standards and market assurance as regional public goods requiring coordinated investment.
She announced that AU-IBAR, through its African Pastoral Markets Development (APMD) programme, will lead implementation of the forum’s resolutions by strengthening the investment case for pastoral livestock, supporting scalable business models, deepening engagement with financiers and coordinating follow-up on agreed policy, finance and market priorities.
Salih also announced that the Second African Pastoral Markets Forum will be held from 19 to 22 July 2027, with a stronger commercial focus that will bring together actors across the livestock value chain, including processors, energy companies, logistics firms, animal health providers, technology companies, feed producers, traders, banks and pastoral organisations.
“The objective will be to deepen the market conversation, structure partnerships and accelerate investment around practical value-chain opportunities,” she said.
She urged governments, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), investors, research institutions and development partners to join AU-IBAR in driving the next phase of Africa’s livestock transformation.
“Let us leave Addis Ababa with resolve to organise the pastoral livestock economy better, finance it better, trade it better, and ensure that pastoral women, men and youth capture greater value from the markets they sustain,” she said.
Representing the Gates Foundation, Senior Officer for Livestock and Economic Opportunity, Dr. Tom Osebe, described the adoption of the ministerial communiqué as one of the forum’s most significant achievements because it formally redefined pastoral livestock as an economic opportunity rather than simply a humanitarian or development issue.
“We leave with something rare: a communiqué, adopted by our ministers themselves, that speaks about pastoral livestock not as a humanitarian concern, but as an economic opportunity,” Osebe said.
“But success will not be measured by that communiqué. It will be measured by implementation.”
He noted that the forum had created direct engagement between livestock enterprises and investors, with businesses presenting investment opportunities while governments and financiers explored blended finance and co-investment mechanisms to unlock private capital for the sector.
However, Osebe warned that Africa’s livestock transformation will remain constrained unless governments tackle transboundary animal diseases, particularly Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), which he described as one of the biggest obstacles to investment and export competitiveness.
He said outbreaks of FMD, alongside Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR), Rift Valley Fever and Lumpy Skin Disease, continue to undermine investor confidence because they can immediately shut down access to premium export markets.
According to him, stronger public-private partnerships in vaccine production, veterinary laboratories, disease surveillance and animal traceability are essential to unlocking investment and expanding market access.
Osebe highlighted the scale of Africa’s untapped opportunity, noting that the continent imports livestock products worth more than $10 billion annually while exporting less than $4 billion, effectively exporting jobs and industrial opportunities to other regions.
“Every dollar of that import bill is a processing job, a logistics job and a veterinary job that we have exported along with it,” he said.
He also pointed to growing opportunities under China’s new zero-tariff market access for African exports but cautioned that tariff preferences alone would not deliver results without robust sanitary and phytosanitary systems and internationally recognised traceability mechanisms.
“Zero tariffs do not mean zero barriers,” he stressed.
Calling for immediate action, Osebe challenged governments, financial institutions and development partners to focus on concrete implementation over the next twelve months.
“The Forum has named the opportunity. Turning this week’s communiqué into tomorrow’s trade flows is now our job,” he said.
Earlier, Nigeria’s Minister of Livestock Development, Idi Mukhtar Maiha, said the forum had laid the foundation for rewriting Africa’s pastoral development story by moving the sector from the margins of economic policy to the centre of continental development.
“For too long, pastoralism has been viewed through the lens of marginal traditional livelihoods,” Maiha said.
“We must mainstream pastoralism, transforming it from a marginal economy into a modern, dynamic and commercially viable engine of growth.”
He said modernising pastoral systems would improve productivity, create millions of jobs, strengthen food security and enable Africa to meet its own rapidly growing demand for livestock products.
Maiha also challenged African financial institutions to develop patient financing tailored to livestock production through single-digit interest loans, longer repayment periods and value-chain-specific financial products.
“The success of this forum will not be measured by the eloquence of speeches, but by the value of our actions,” he said, urging Member States to implement the commitments contained in the ministerial communiqué without delay.
As delegates departed Addis Ababa, the message from the forum was clear: Africa’s pastoral livestock sector is no longer being viewed as a subsistence activity but as a strategic economic industry capable of driving regional integration, attracting investment, expanding intra-African trade and delivering broad-based economic growth under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
