Evaluation of the livestock management and infrastructure development support scheme in seven districts of Botswana

J C Moreki, J Mokokwe*, D Keboneilwe* and O Koloka

Department of Animal Production, Ministry of Agriculture, P/Bag 0032, Gaborone. Botswana
* Division of Research and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, P/Bag 003, Gaborone, Botswana
jcmoreki@gmail.com

Abstract

A survey was conducted in seven districts of Botswana, to evaluate the performance of the Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development (LIMID) support scheme. The survey covered 412 beneficiaries randomly selected across the districts. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) software.

Smallstock were reared by 360 beneficiaries (87.38%), 38 (9.22%) Tswana chickens and 4 (0.97%) guinea fowl farmers, respectively. Only 10 (2.43%) farmers applied for infrastructure development component, making this component the least utilized. The low uptake of infrastructure development component is attributable mainly to high famers’ contributions towards the grant. In the resource-poor component (smallstock and Tswana chickens), the majority of the beneficiaries were women and single, whereas men dominated the infrastructure development component. Only 67 (15%) of the youth applied for LIMID components, indicating that youth participation in the Program was low across the districts.

These results indicate that LIMID has beneficial effects and contributes towards improving food security and poverty reduction.

Key words: Food security, LIMID, poultry, resource-poor, small-stock, Tswana chickens

Introduction

In the mid 1960s agriculture accounted for 40% of Botswana’s gross domestic product (GDP) compared to 1.6% in 2006/07 (Anon, 2009). Agricultural production is based on the traditional subsistence-oriented systems; with limited commercial activities for both crops and livestock. About 70% of rural households in Botswana derive their livelihoods from agriculture (Ministry of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP) (2009)). Livestock farming is the principal agricultural subsector and an essential component of the rural economy (Anon, 2009). Currently, livestock farming accounts for about 80% of the agricultural sector’s gross domestic product (GDP). However, the contribution of livestock to the agricultural sector’s GDP is likely to be over 80% given recent developments in the local poultry industry.

Given the importance of livestock to the national economy, the Government of Botswana (GoB) continuously develops policies and programs geared towards supporting the livestock industry to enhance the results for improved food security and the general livelihoods of the people. The Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development (LIMID) Program was developed by GoB in 2006. The objectives of LIMID are to promote food security through improved productivity of cattle and smallstock, to improve livestock management, to improve range resource utilization and conservation, to eliminate destitution by providing resources to the poor and to provide infrastructure for safe and hygienic processing of poultry products.

In 2002, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) reviewed four agricultural support schemes: Arable Land Development Program (ALDEP), Emergency Plant Protection Program (EPPP), Support to Livestock Owners in the Communal Areas (SLOCA) and Livestock Water Development Program (LWDP). The review was prompted by growing concerns of the poor performance of the agricultural sector over the past decades despite considerable public sector investment (Centre for Applied Research, 2002). The review recommended that SLOCA and LWDP be continued but in a modified form. This resulted in the birth of LIMID which was first implemented on 1^st April 2007.

The LIMID Program comprises seven packages with the three (3) packages focused on resource-poor households (i.e., smallstock, Tswana chickens and guinea fowl) and the remainder is for infrastructure development (i.e., animal husbandry and fodder support, borehole/well equipping, borehole drilling and reticulation and borehole/well purchase, as well as, cooperative poultry abattoirs). The LIMID Program is available to Botswana citizens only (Ministry of Agriculture 2006).

From 1^st April 2007 to 31^st December 2009, LIMID 9948 applications were considered by MoA and 9330 were approved (Table 1).

Presently, 6030 applicants have been assisted. However, delays in the collection of packages was experienced due to shortage of stock (smallstock and guinea fowl); failure by farmers to raise their contributions; inadequacy of funds; abandonment of projects for greener pastures or further studies; inadequacy of service providers e.g., shortage of drillers; inadequacy of Supplies Officers; shortage of transport; shortage of staff especially LIMID Program Officers; escalation of prices; unreliable suppliers and livestock diseases.

No study has been undertaken to evaluate the performance of the LIMID Program. Therefore, a study was undertaken in seven districts of Botswana from July to November 2009 to review the performance of LIMID. The objective of the study was to evaluate the performance of LIMID in the selected research sites in order to determine if it has met its objectives.

Materials and methods 

Data were collected through direct observations, interview of key informants and by administering a questionnaire to 412 LIMID beneficiaries in Central, Kgalagadi, Kgatleng, Kweneng, North West, Southern and South East districts.

From each district, farmers were selected from a sampling frame obtained from the Department of Animal Production offices in the districts which consisted of all the LIMID beneficiaries. The sampling was based on farmers having benefited from LIMID Program. The availability of the baseline data made it easier to sample for the survey based-evaluation study as villages with a high number of beneficiaries and the surrounding villages with more than three beneficiaries were sampled. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire administered to the sampled beneficiaries across the districts. These included demographic characteristics, education, marital status, extension service, program performance, as well as, perceptions on the program design and its future. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) software.

Results and discussion 

Demographic characteristics

Of 412 respondents, 320 (77.7%) were females and 92 (22.3%) males. A total of 360 respondents (286 females and 74 men) benefited from the smallstock package (Table 2).

This result is consistent with Mrema and Rannobe (1996) and Ogola et al (2010) in Botswana and Kenya, respectively. Mrema and Rannobe (1996) reported that women own more goats than their male counterparts who have more resources and can afford to own cattle. Sitholimela (2000) in South Africa argued that the advantages of goats over cattle included: they are easily handled by women and children; eat less; produce quantities of meat and milk for households’ consumption; have a short generation interval and produce more progenies. In agreement with Ahlers et al (2009), 28 women in the current study owned Tswana chickens compared to seven men. Among the resource-poor packages, guinea fowl package was the least utilized (Table 2) due to shortage of stock since this is a new enterprise, as well as, poor management. It is not clear why women have not applied for the guinea fowl package in the current study.

The infrastructure development component has been accessed by 10 (2.43%) people and the majority of the beneficiaries are males (Table 3).

The low uptake of this component is attributable to high contributions that farmers have to pay before grants could be disbursed. The participation of youth on the LIMID Program was low across the villages and was only restricted to the resource-poor packages. In Botswana, the term “youth” is defined as young males and females who are aged from 12 to 29 years (National Youth Policy 1996). In the current study, only 67 (15%) youths applied for LIMID components. This might indicate that the Program is not appealing or is unattractive to the youth. The results of this study demonstrated that females participated in LIMID in large numbers than men (Table 2), especially in the resource-poor component.

Education

About 314 (76.46%) beneficiaries attended school suggesting that communication of extension messages would be easy. Of the 314 respondents that attended school, 246 were females and 68 males. Ogola et al (2010) reported literacy rate of 71.3% in a recent study in Kenya. As shown in Table 4, 44.2% of the respondents had primary education, 23.8% Junior Certificate (JC), 5.3% O’ level, 2.4% non-formal education, 0.5% tertiary education while 23.5% respondents never attended school.

It is clear from Table 4 that the majority of the respondents had primary education followed by JC. These results indicate that the majority of beneficiaries attended school. However, 98 beneficiaries (74 females and 24 males) never attended school, thus challenging the extension service to devise methods of communicating messages to this group.

Figure 1 illustrates that Kgatleng district had the highest number of beneficiaries that attended school (96.55%) followed by South East (90%) and North West (88.04%) districts.

The literacy rates for Kgalagadi, Central and Kweneng were 62.82%, 67.86% and 70.83%, respectively. In the current study, Kgalagadi had the lowest number of people that attended school. The high literacy rate for Kgatleng district could be a contributory factor to the excellent performance of the LIMID Program in the district.

Marital status

According to Table 5, 214 of the beneficiaries across the districts were not married. Kgalagadi, North West and Central districts had higher number of respondents that were married compared to Kweneng, Kgatleng and Southern districts which had higher number of respondents that were engaged in the “living together” practice. Furthermore, North West, Kgalagadi and Central districts had significant number of widowed respondents.

These results support the previous findings that showed that the low-resourced are usually in the single headed households (Mutangadura 2005). In the current study, 271 beneficiaries were single (divorced, widowed and never married combined), representing 65.78% of the total beneficiaries interviewed.

Extension service

About 86% of the beneficiaries indicated that they were satisfied with the LIMID packages while the remainder was not satisfied. Although these results show that beneficiaries were satisfied with packages; timeliness of service delivery was a concern. Thirty-five percent of beneficiaries mentioned that they did not receive the packages on time. The reasons advanced for unsatisfactory delivery of services included: inadequate supplies (59.03%), delays in processing applications (17.36%), late payment of suppliers (9.03%), diseases (4.17%), lack of funds (3.47%), unreliable suppliers (2.78%), whereas the remainder (i.e., failure of farmers to raise down payment and poor interpretation of guidelines by extension agents) equally shared 4.17%.

Inadequacy of supplies is common, especially for smallstock in most districts except for Kgalagadi district. The extension staff confirmed this and further highlighted that shortage of Supplies Officers to accompany them to verify supplies before the purchase of stock was another major constraint in the program implementation.

Table 6 shows that most beneficiaries sought assistance on vaccinations, followed by general livestock advice and animal diseases.

North West, Kgalagadi and Southern districts led in seeking assistance on animal diseases including vaccinations. This could be attributable to the frequent outbreaks of diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and mange in North West and Kgalagadi districts, respectively. In order of importance, Central, North West, Kgalagadi and Southern districts recorded the highest responses on services provided by the extension service (Table 6).

Program performance

Smallstock population increased from 9007 to 11405, representing an increase of 26.62% (Table 7).

Kgatleng district achieved the highest increase in smallstock population of 47.85%, followed by Kgalagadi and Kweneng with 39.52% and 25.20%, respectively. Across the districts, smallstock population on average increased by 25.40% indicating significant improvement in productivity.

It is clear from Table 7 that except for guinea fowl, smallstock and Tswana chicken populations increased across the districts. Failure to increase guinea fowl population by farmers could be ascribed to poor husbandry management due to inadequacy of extension service. This may indicate that in order to reduce losses, the extension service should intensify farmer training in general husbandry.

Beneficiary perceptions on program design and its future

Except for South East district, beneficiaries in six districts were satisfied with LIMID (Figure 2).

About 344 (83.50%) respondents indicated that they were satisfied with the program, 61 (14.8%) respondents said they had problems with the program, whereas 7 (1.70%) respondents gave no responses. The beneficiaries’ responses on whether LIMID should be improved or not are illustrated in Figure 3.

About 237 (57.52%) respondents said that there was no need to review LIMID, 162 (39.32%) said it needed to be revised with a view to improving it while 13 (3.16%) gave no answers (i.e., did not indicate whether it should or should not be revised).

Figure 4 illustrates the beneficiaries’ views on how LIMID could be improved.

According to Figure 4, 28 respondents said that the grant they received was too small as it could not sustain them for any longer because it did not cover the cost of medication for the period that they were not allowed to sell livestock purchased with the grants. Furthermore, 18 respondents suggested that LIMID support for smallstock should be revised to cater for kraals (livestock enclosure), feeds and hired labor. Additionally, the beneficiaries mentioned that the Program should include cattle and that livestock (i.e., smallstock and poultry) received should be increased.

In the current study, most of the suggestions did not include what the beneficiaries themselves could do to improve the Program; which is indicative of the dependency syndrome that is afflicting those to whom programs are meant for. Perhaps it is time that the Program designs take this matter into consideration and become more participatory so that beneficiaries could also play an active role in ensuring that programs are not abused.

About 404 (98.06%) beneficiaries said that LIMID should be continued while the remainder gave no views on whether the Program should or should not be continued. The reasons given by beneficiaries for the continuance of LIMID included: it improves the lives of the poor (40.05%); it helps to alleviate poverty (15.29%); it gives farmers who did not benefit from the previous government support schemes a chance to benefit too (14.81%); it creates self-employment opportunities (10.92%); it promotes and increases livestock ownership (9.92%); it encourages the youth to venture into agriculture (7.77%); it is a source of livelihoods to households (3.40%) and others (0.97%). These results indicate that farmers want LIMID to be continued as it has a bearing on their lives. The rearing of small-stock and poultry could be a stepping stone to respondents rearing cattle in the future, thus contributing to the Ministry’s objective of increasing the cattle population from 2.5 to 3.5 million.

Conclusions 

• Women’s participation in the Program was high, especially in smallstock and Tswana chicken packages indicating the important role LIMID plays in food secuirty and poverty alleviation.

• LIMID has resulted in increased population of  smallstock and Tswana chickens across the districts. On average smallstock and Tswana chickens increased by 25.40% and 11.94%, respectively.

• The majority of beneficiaries were women and single indicating that the Program is contributing towards addressing issues of gender imbalances.

• There was low uptake of the infrastructure development packages due to high contributions that farmers had to pay before the grant could be disbursed. 

• Youth participation in LIMID was low suggesting that the Program is not appealing to this group.

Acknowledgements 

The authors are grateful to the farmers and extension agents that provided information for the survey and to the Ministry of Agriculture for financing the study. Also, Messrs T. Basinyi and M. Lesiapeto are sincerely thanked for performing statistical analysis.

References 

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Received 18 February 2010; Accepted 24 February 2010; Published 1 May 2010

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