Value Chain Hub—Eastern and southern Africa

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Issues and strategies in ex-post evaluation of intervention against animal disease outbreaks and spreads

Animal disease outbreaks pose a significant threat in terms of potential economic losses, reduced productivity, and negative impacts on public health, food security and nutrition. This paper considers four issues in ex-post evaluation of animal disease interventions: firstly, a counterfactual involves simulating disease trajectories without the intervention. But some diseases can become endemic or become dormant after an outbreak, making it a challenge to know the true trajectory without the intervention. Secondly, without adequate design of controls and treatments, how can the estimated impacts be attributed to a given intervention? Thirdly, how do we assess costs saved by the intervention? Fourthly, given data uncertainty, would a stochastic simulation give better estimates than a deterministic one in solving for key variables? This paper addresses these issues and proposes solutions that bridge the gap between household level analysis and macro-level simulations in modelling the impact of animal diseases outbreaks

Farm-level and consumption responses to improved efficiency of Tanzania’s informal dairy value chain

The study uses a partial equilibrium model to determine the benefits that would accrue to smallholder dairy producers and consumers from improved efficiency of Tanzania’s informal dairy value chain. Two sources of technical efficiency are analyzed, namely, cost efficiency and scale efficiency. Using aggregate time series data to simulate the model, the study finds that improvement in scale efficiency offers relatively large benefits to both producers and consumers. However, benefits from improvement in cost efficiency are relatively small and disproportionate. It is concluded that improving technical efficiency in general would lead to significant benefits for producers and consumers