Sustainable community-based organizations for the genetic improvement of livestock in developing countries

Livestock industries in developing countries face numerous constraints that have often hampered the establishment and sustainability of national genetic improvement programmes. One major inadequacy in a number of programmes previously developed was that livestock owners were not taken into account in decision making and ownership of improvement initiatives. No matter how much effort is put into financial and technological support, the eventual survival of improvement programmes depends on whether the farmers understood and agreed with the objective of the projects. Otherwise, programmes tend to fade away as soon as the development agencies leave. Community ownership of genetic-improvement programmes has been suggested as a potentially sustainable alternative. In this paper, the establishment and sustainability of community-based organizations for the genetic improvement of livestock (CBOGIL) are discussed with reference to some successful community-based genetic-improvement initiatives in different livestock species.