A.L.P.H.A. Plus seeks to boost access to veterinary diagnostics, products, and knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa

“In Africa there is a proverb. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you go want to go far, go with partners.”

According to Gabriel Varga, Regional Director Africa SSR at Zoetis, it is a lesson that the company has learned during the first five years of its African Livestock Productivity and Health Advancement (A.L.P.H.A.) initiative, a project that “aims to improve veterinary health and food security in some of the most rapidly developing regions of the world.”

The A.L.P.H.A. initiative made the news recently when, in early March, Zoetis announced that it had received a USD 15.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand the programme further. The next iteration, known as A.L.P.H.A. Plus, will go deeper in the countries where it is already operating — Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania — and will also expand into Kenya, Ivory Coast, and five other countries from across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Whereas the first A.L.P.H.A. programme which began in 2017 covered cattle and poultry, Zoetis is now looking to see what it can bring to aquaculture production, which is a growing segment across the continent, from Nigeria to the Great Lakes region.

“For A.L.P.H.A. Plus, we are exploring what type of [fish] farming, what type of diseases, what kind of samples we can get, from which countries, and then, building on that, we will make a decision [on whether] we go into that investment or not,” he says.

Expanding Diagnostic Services

The objective of A.L.P.H.A. Plus is to accelerate access to veterinary products, services and diagnostic tools to increase the productivity of smallholder farms, with a particular focus on supporting female farmers, who represent an important subset of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Diagnostics are an important starting point. “One of our experiences from the African professional environment is that there’s still a lot going on in the way of ‘treat to diagnose’,” Varga observes. “Farmers come to the agro shop, and they know that last time this specific product helped, so [they say] ‘let’s do it again’. But they don’t know, really, the underlying cause why, what happened. And it’s not their job [to know], actually, because it should be a paravet or vet who should diagnose. But because of the lack of access, we need to create that awareness about the diagnostic part.”

There are at least two parts to the diagnostics pillar of the A.L.P.H.A. programme. The first is building up a diagnostic network. Varga says that one the important learnings from the first iteration of the programme was the importance of partnerships in making this a success. “So the initial idea, for example, was that we wanted to have our own diagnostic labs, which we would run, operate, and do everything. We had to move away from it; we realized that, first of all, logistically it’s very difficult. Secondly, if you don’t have partnerships, then it’s not working efficiently enough.”

Moreover, working with various institutions already in place has allowed them useful flexibility. For example, he recounts, “At Kampala University in Uganda, we have highly trained professionals who can do two things: they can do diagnostics [themselves] and also train [others].” Meanwhile, in Nigeria, A.L.P.H.A. worked with a hatchery to help expand and move an existing lab from a location on their own premises (where access was limited for biosecurity reasons) to a location in a nearby city where it could be useful not only to this hatchery but could also support the success of its clients in the local poultry industry. “The number of samples went up incredibly, immediately,” he said. Finally, when it comes to public-sector partnerships, the initiative is even helping to reinforce government labs doing diagnostics for notifiable diseases with training and equipment. The other part of the diagnostics pillar includes helping reduce the distance between farmers and labs. To this effect, it has developed a digital smartphone app: LabCards, to simplify the processing of samples for diagnostic testing and encourage more professionals to do diagnostics. As Varga explains, when a sample is taken, a minimum amount of information needs to be plugged in — what the sample is, and what tests are required. “The phone automatically detects the site where the sample was taken, and the lab connected to it can see immediately that this sample is coming. So we are not losing traceability of the samples.”

Importantly for the initiative and for the Gates Foundation funding it, the app can be used by anyone, as long as there is a local veterinary diagnostics lab willing to adopt it. Indeed, Varga says, although it was developed for Sub-Saharan Africa, it is now also being promoted by Zoetis teams in Southeast Asia.

Product Access

The second pillar, improving access to high quality veterinary products, requires actions on several fronts. The first is regulatory: getting products registered in various African markets, which requires resources and time. Zoetis must identify which products fit the markets’ needs — sometimes, indeed, demonstrating that the disease is a problem in a particular area — and then pursue a regulatory process which, in Varga’s words, is “as strict as in the US or Europe or anywhere in the world.”

Indeed, he says, one of the major learnings of the initial A.L.P.H.A. programme was that product approvals would take longer than anticipated. “We were maybe overambitious. We thought that the registration would go very fast, and within one to two years, we’d have registered products. We had to change that view, and we [now] know that it’s between two to four years.” Still, the company is now able to see the results of this persistence; whereas prior to 2017, Zoetis had an estimated 3-5 products officially registered in Sub-Saharan Africa, the company now says it has over 90.

Beyond product registration, there is also the necessity of building distribution channels. This means finding, training, and certifying partners who can import, store, and distribute products which are sensitive to humidity, temperature and other handling conditions.

A.L.P.H.A. Plus seeks to go beyond the distributor level and reach those directly responsible for selling and using the products, to help them understand the application and correct use.

“Because [we’re talking about] new products, and sometimes even new diseases, we need to train those colleagues, whether it’s our business partners or distributors, or whether it’s professionals like vets, paravets, or farmers,” he explains.

“The farmer is not going to a distributor, they’re going to the agro shop in a village, or in the neighbouring city. They go there to pick up those products, and those points of sale need to be certified as well.”

Training

Training is an essential part of the A.L.P.H.A. Plus, which is particularly interested in reaching those who have not been able to access such opportunities.

Technology has been a major part of this; sweeping aside any preconceived notions of Africa as being behind the times in matters of digitalisation, Varga explains: “smartphones are very widely used, so that’s quite an [important] channel. But at the same time, it mainly focuses on the male users, and because we have gender equity as one of the key elements of the whole A.L.P.H.A. initiative, we need to make sure that we find a way to equalize training accessibility.”

To help meet this objective, he says, A.L.P.H.A. Plus also does face-to-face trainings, together with partners like cooperatives or farmers’ groups who have on-the-ground knowledge. This, he contrasts with his experience in the Nordic countries, where the company would mostly be working through veterinarians. “[Africa] is a huge, huge continent, [with] huge countries, huge distances. The vets are not everywhere. We cannot rely on one channel. We have to work with farmers… these groups, they help us with that. They have regular meetings, and they love to come together and gather in some of the village centres. It’s a very different [experience], would say, to do these trainings through those cooperatives.”

The A.L.P.H.A. project thus far has managed to train 30,000 professionals, Varga estimates, around 30% of whom were women. “Our strategic goal is 50%, but we reached up to 30% [so far].”

Underlying the whole of the programme is the desire to cultivate talent in Africa. “If the demographics and social development and urbanization in African [continue] as they are going today, in 10, 20, 30 years from now, there will be a big need for additional proteins to [feed] big populations in big cities. And you need good, well-trained, educated, capable colleagues to do that. So we were looking for colleagues in Africa, to hire them, train them, develop them, to act as future leaders.”

By Shannon Behary, senior editor