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This study examined the outcomes of decentralization and privatization reforms for the delivery of veterinary services and smallholders’ use of these services in two districts in Northern Ghana, where the settlements are scattered and an extensive system of livestock keeping pre-vails. The study shows that these outcomes have not been altogether positive. The sharp reductions in financial and staff resources allocated for public-sector veterinary services have led to irregular mass vaccinations against contagious animal diseases, greater inequity of service delivery, the collapse of quality controls of drugs, the proliferation of drugs from informal sources on the market, often inadequately informed self-medication, and the moonlighting of public veterinarians and para-veterinarians for private purposes. This ‘litany of woes’ does not necessarily imply a return to the public-sector system installed by the British colonial power. The public sector still has a relevant role to play, e.g. for surveillance and control of infectious or zoonotic diseases, guarantee of quality control of drugs and vaccines, and adherence to international protocols for livestock reporting systems. Our study shows that the public sector requires urgent action to enable it to play these essential roles. On the other hand, the self-organization of a few communities to effectively use veterinary staff and the apparent will- of farmers to pay for effective services suggest that strategies to mainstream the delivery of customer-oriented services by private para-veterinarians to groups in rural areas may hold prospects. The study also shows that measures to implement agency-driven change, such as economizing on public-sector costs (i.e. change in allocative institutions) trigger unforeseen and inter-linked institutional changes in other domains with unintended consequences. Awareness of such dynamics might help policy-makers and analysts to better under-stand the issues involved in coordinating multiple fronts of change and could help in assessing where government could act as a market or system facilitator (Carney 1998, Klerkx and Leeuwis 2008) in order to counteract undesirable effects of reforms through, e.g. quality control or by facilitating a match between the demand and the supply sides of the veterinary services system.
References
Ahuja, V., 2004. The economic rationale of public and private sector roles in the provision of animal health services. OIE revue scientifique et technique, 23 (1), 33 – 45.
Ahwoi, K., 2010. Local government and decentralisation in Ghana. Accra, Ghana: Unimax Macmillan. Amankwah, K., et al., 2012. Diagnosing constraints to market participation of small ruminant producers in
Northern Ghana: an innovation systems analysis. NJAS – Wageningen journal of life sciences, 60 – 63, 37 – 47.
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