Africa turns PPR commitment into investment push in Rome

DAR ES SALAAM: FOR millions of African families, a sheep or goat is more than livestock. It can be food on the table, income for school expenses, a source of medical care, savings for difficult times and an asset that helps a household withstand economic shocks.

That lifeline is now at the centre of a renewed African and international push to eradicate Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR), a highly contagious viral disease affecting sheep and goats and threatening livestock-dependent communities across the continent.

The challenge took centre stage in Rome on September 22, 2026, where political leaders, animal-health experts, regional institutions and financing partners met at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) headquarters to discuss how to move PPR eradication from political commitment to financed implementation.

The high-level side event, held during the FAO Global Conference on Agrifood Systems Transformation through One Health and Transboundary Animal Disease Prevention, Control and Eradication, brought together the Prime Minister of Tanzania, ministerial representatives from Chad, Cameroon, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso, as well as the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), European Union, African Union and technical organisations working in animal health.

For Tanzania, the discussion provided an opportunity to demonstrate how political commitment is being translated into investment in vaccination, livestock identification, surveillance and veterinary systems.

Prime Minister, Dr Mwigulu Nchemba said transforming agrifood systems requires investment beyond production, including systems that protect people, animals and ecosystems.

“As I underscore in my opening remarks yesterday, I wish to underscore again some few issues, starting with the fact that transforming agrifood systems requires us to invest not only in production but also in the systems that protect people, animals and the whole ecosystems on which that production depends,” he said.

He described PPR eradication as a practical example of the One Health approach, linking animal health with food security, rural livelihoods and trade.

“The eradication of Peste des Petits Ruminants, PPR, is a clear example of this principle in action,” Dr Nchemba said.

According to the Prime Minister, Tanzania has already made progress in controlling PPR in cattle, with the current focus on sheep and goats, which are particularly important to ordinary pastoral and rural households.

“Tanzania investing in PPR eradication is an investment in food and nutrition security. We managed to eradicate PPR on cows and now the focus is on goats and sheep,” he said.

He said the importance of small ruminants extends beyond livestock ownership because they contribute to household food supplies, incomes and resilience.

He said, “thus investing in it is investing in food, nutrition security, rural livelihoods, livestock and trade and the resiliency and agrifood systems.”

Tanzania’s commitment has also been backed by significant financial investment. Dr Nchemba said President Samia Suluhu Hassan launched a five-year national livestock vaccination and identification campaign in July 2025, supported by more than 260 billion Tanzanian shillings, equivalent to more than 86 million US dollars.

During the 2025/26 financial year, the government vaccinated more than 16.8 million sheep and goats against PPR, representing a substantial proportion of the 17.2 million livestock targeted in high-risk areas.

For the 2026/27 financial year, he said, more than 30.8 billion shillings, approximately 11.6 million US dollars, has been allocated to sustain the second phase of the campaign.

But Tanzania’s approach is moving beyond vaccination.

Dr Nchemba said, “our approach now does not stop at vaccination. We are strengthening livestock identification and traceability, disease surveillance, laboratories, diagnostics and veterinary services.”

The objective, he said, is to develop systems that prevent and detect disease rather than wait for outbreaks to occur.

“In other words, we are investing in systems, not simply responding to outbreaks,” he said.

That approach is particularly important because PPR is a transboundary animal disease.

Livestock movements across borders can allow diseases to spread between countries, making regional cooperation essential to sustaining national progress.

Tanzania’s geographical position between Eastern and Southern Africa adds another layer to that challenge.

“This experience also carries a message that Tanzania sits at an important intersection between Eastern and Southern Africa,” Dr Nchemba said.

“Protecting our livestock therefore also means strengthening our regional capacity to prevent the movement and spread of PPR across borders.”

The Prime Minister used the movement of livestock between neighbouring countries to illustrate the difficulty of controlling animal diseases within national boundaries.

“I said yesterday while East African partners are discussing about stepping into federation, animals have federated faster than us,” he said.

“We have cows moving across from Kenya to Tanzania. Cows moving from Tanzania…”

The unfinished observation captured a central concern of the Rome dialogue: livestock movement is already regional, while disease-control systems often remain organised primarily at national level.

More than 70 countries have confirmed PPR within their borders, while others remain at risk of introduction. Together, affected countries are home to approximately 1.7 billion sheep and goats, representing around 80 per cent of the global population of the two species.

PPR does not infect humans, but its effects extend into household incomes, food and nutrition security, rural employment, livestock trade and community resilience.

A global benefit-cost study published in 2016 estimated that a 15-year PPR eradication programme costing about 2.26 billion US dollars could generate discounted economic benefits of approximately 76.5 billion US dollars.

The economic argument was therefore central to the Rome discussion, with IGAD calling for countries to develop costed national investment plans and integrate them into national and regional financing frameworks.

The financing push received a major boost from the European Union, which announced an additional 50 million euros for a second phase of support to PPR eradication in Africa, with the prospect of mobilising another 40 million euros through blended financing.

The World Bank brought its perspective on livestock development and sustainable transformation of livestock systems, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contributed to discussions on mobilising investment for high-impact interventions.

Chad and Cameroon shared national experiences in vaccination, veterinary infrastructure and services for pastoral communities, while Bangladesh and Burkina Faso contributed perspectives on controlling transboundary animal diseases.

The discussions also made clear that vaccination alone cannot achieve eradication.

Effective eradication requires reliable vaccine supplies, functioning cold chains, trained veterinary personnel, strong surveillance, laboratory capacity, animal-health information systems and cross-border cooperation.

Africa is not starting from scratch. National strategies, vaccination programmes, laboratory networks, disease information systems and regional coordination mechanisms are already in place in different countries.

The priority is now to consolidate those gains, close financing gaps and accelerate implementation.

The Rome dialogue called for PPR eradication by 2040 and stronger control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD), with countries and Regional Economic Communities urged to prepare investment plans and allocate national resources.

It also called for stronger national, regional and global coordination, including cross-border harmonisation and an “episystem” approach that recognises interconnected livestock populations and movement patterns.

The European Union contribution is expected to provide catalytic financing, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and World Bank are being encouraged to increase support for scientific and epidemiological approaches to eradication.

PPR champions are also expected to continue advocacy at high-level international platforms, including the planned EU-Africa Summit in 2027.

For Tanzania, the message from Rome reinforces an approach already being implemented at home: invest in vaccination, but also invest in the systems that make disease prevention sustainable.

For pastoralists and smallholder farmers, the impact of such investment will ultimately be measured not in conference commitments or budget figures, but in healthy animals, protected incomes, secure food supplies and communities able to withstand economic shocks.

The Rome dialogue has therefore shifted the conversation from commitment to investment and from investment to implementation.

As Africa works towards the 2040 PPR eradication target, the challenge is to sustain political attention, mobilise predictable financing and strengthen cooperation across borders.

For the millions of households whose livelihoods depend on sheep and goats, eradicating PPR is not simply an animal-health target.

It is an investment in food, livelihoods, trade and the resilience of Africa’s agrifood syste