Nigeria’s agriculture sector generates one-third of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employs two-thirds of the workforce. Its recent growth dominates Nigerian non-oil economic growth. Small-scale, semi-commercial farms, settled agricultural households and transhumant pastoralists dominate production. Livestock is the second largest agricultural subsector and features 16.43 million cattle, 34.69 million sheep, 55.15 million goats, 7.18 million pigs and 183.16 million poultry. These provide nutrition and food security, and a range of services including draught power for cropping activities.

Poor animal productivity is widely attributed to the occurrence and endemicity of certain animal diseases. These are often unreported, unconfirmed or poorly documented. The financial losses associated with such outbreaks and costs associated with the disease burden are also rarely documented.

This ILRI research report by Mohamadou Fadiga, Christine Jost  and John Ihedioha documents the costs of disease burden, morbidity and mortality related to the following diseases in Nigeria: Newcastle disease (NCD) in local poultry, peste des petits ruminants (PPR) in sheep and goats, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) in cattle, African swine fever (ASF) in pigs and trypanosomosis in cattle and pigs.

This study shows that interventions to control major livestock diseases would yield significant economic returns
to Nigeria.

Economic analysis estimates the current annual financial burden of PPR, CBPP, trypanosomosis, NCD and ASF
amounts to be 29.2 billion Nigerian naira (NGN). The cost of inaction against these diseases is highest for
trypanosomosis in cattle and pigs (NGN 10 billion), followed by NCD in rural chicken (NGN 8.9 billion), PPR in sheep
and goats (NGN 6.8 billion), CBPP (NGN 2.2 billion) and ASF (NGN 1.3 billion). An additional investment of NGN 10.8 billion will be required to eliminate the losses associated with the five diseases.

An additional investment of NGN 10.8 billion will be required to eliminate the losses associated with the five diseases.
This would lead to NGN 24.4 billion worth of additional benefits with 18% or NGN 2.4 billion accruing due to
intervention against PPR, 2% against CBPP, 23% against trypanosomosis, 52% against NCD in local chicken and 5%
against ASF.

Download the full report