Résumé

The capacity of livestock systems to provide protein-rich food to billions of smallholder rural food producers and urban consumers, generate income and employment, reduce vulnerabilities in pastoral systems, intensify small-scale mixed crop-livestock systems and sustain livelihood opportunities to millions of livestock keepers (ILRI 2012) makes them an appealing vehicle for pro-poor development. Increased consumption of livestock products, particularly in the fast-growing economies of the developing world, has been an important determinant of rising prices for meat and milk (Delgado et al. 1999; Delgado 2003). These price surges provide new incentives and opportunities for using livestock as an instrument to help poor people escape poverty due to the multiple benefi ts that they offer and the multiple roles that they play in different production systems (Rangnekar 1998; Aklilu et al. 2008).