Ethiopia’s large livestock population offers great potential for economic growth, poverty reduction, and food security. However, realizing this potential requires addressing productivity issues, improving animal health services, enhancing market access, and building resilience to climate change.  The recent conflict and drought in the country have had a devastating impact on the productivity of      agricultural and livestock activities, with significant loss of assets due to destruction and looting, and/or because of drought.

The Restoration of Livestock Services in Conflict and Drought Affected Areas of Ethiopia (RESTORE) aims to stabilize livestock assets and rebuild essential livestock service delivery systems, including veterinary clinics, laboratories, breed improvement facilities, and abattoirs. These services are critical for ensuring long-term sustainability in Ethiopia’s conflict      and drought      affected regions.

RESTORE builds on and expands existing programs that enhance food security for smallholder farmers and pastoralists, focusing on female-headed households. Recognizing the complex nature of the challenges, the initiative prioritizes securing      resilience, particularly advancing the transition to environmentally and socially sustainable food systems.

Objectives:

The overall objective of RESTORE is to contribute to enhancing food security, nutrition, and livelihood resilience for rural communities across the country, with a special emphasis on areas affected by conflict and drought.

The specific objective is the restoration of lost livestock assets and livestock service delivery systems destroyed in the conflict and drought-affected parts of the country as well as to increase overall sector productivity and improve the marketing of livestock products.

Project Activities:

• Restore Veterinary Service Delivery: Rebuilding the public and private veterinary service systems to ensure effective livestock health management;
• Enhance the Leather Value Chain: Addressing skin and hide-damaging diseases and improve processing systems to support sustainable leather value chains;
• Stabilize of Livestock Assets: Supporting reconstitution of livestock assets, including targeted restocking initiatives;
• Disease Prevention and Control: Supporting implementation of national priority livestock disease prevention and control programs through risk-based vaccination campaigns and integrated disease information systems;
• Strengthen Veterinary Laboratory Capacity: Enhancing the technical and operational capacity of regional veterinary laboratories by supplying essential equipment, diagnostic kits, and consumables;
• Livestock Feed and Rangeland Management: Improving livestock feed production, promoting  sustainable rangeland management, and developing strategic feed reserves -  supporting irrigated feed production, improving      forage cultivation, and efficient utilization, particularly during prolonged droughts, while transforming the feed sub-sector into a market-driven commodity; and
• Animal Health and Food Safety Standards: Assisting the Ministry of Agriculture in enhancing enforcement and compliance with animal health and food safety standards to meet market demands effectively.

Expected Results:

• Restored livestock service delivery systems in drought/conflict affected areas of the country;
• Improved quality and reliability of integrated public and private veterinary service delivery;
• Availability and better quality of livestock feeds improved through farmers/ pastoralists
• Private sector driven fodder production and marketing;
• Enhanced quality of hide and skin through improved animal health intervention