The 3-year project “Promoting Ethnoveterinary Medicine for Sustainable Livestock Husbandry Practices in Northern Ghana” (Ethnovet) is being implemented in northern Ghana with funds from Misereor (Germany). The project coordinator Foster Awuni in ACDEP (Association of Church-based Development Projects) reports on the first half-year of partnership with local ethnovet practitioners, the Animal Research Institute of the Ghanaian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Veterinary Services Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Pong-Tamale Central Veterinary Laboratory, the Animal Science Department of the University for Development Studies (Tamale) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH).
The project works with small-scale livestock keepers who own mainly poultry, pigs, sheep and goats. It seeks to i) validate herbal treatments that the farmers use on their livestock; ii) work with the farmers to develop appropriate packaging and marketing of selected herbal medicines; and iii) set up a network of ethnovet practitioners for research, learning and advocacy in northern Ghana.
This first project report describes activities and outputs achieved in the period Oct 2019–Mar 2020, including staff recruitment, stakeholders planning meeting, project inception workshop, community sensitisation, identification of local ethnoveterinary practitioners and their innovations, developing an M&E plan and tools, and developing guidelines for documenting local ethnoveterinary knowledge, practices and innovations.
