 what's happening to children under five, so how we can actually apply an intersectional lens to analyzing the impact, but also to responding to the pandemic. All right, great, thank you so much. Joyce? Yeah, what worries me most as Zemaima in God pray, the effect of COVID-19 on food and nutrition security and also on the nutrition security, which is mostly forgotten. And this is because it affects, it has some irreversible consequences, and especially to children below two years, which in case something goes wrong in their development when they are growing up, even their brains will not develop to their full potential. And therefore we are looking at a future that will have maybe people who are unable to do what they are supposed to do, not because of their mistake, but because something happened during their development. So I'm so much concerned on the issues of the double nutrition burden, especially on the access of some of the micronutrients that have babies and young people are supposed to get when they are growing up. So actually that worries me most. Oh, this is actually quite true. Now I'd like to ask a question directly to Zemaima in regards to what she said. Do you have any evidence on the differential impact on women and men and how you are repurposing your investments? And how does that look for the livestock sector in terms of moving forward? Thank you, Muthoni. So there's a couple of things that we know already. So we know that a majority of women work in the informal sector. So that we know. We know that a lot of our food trade, our cross-border trade, even in the continent is done by women. And when COVID hit, these were some of the sectors that were most affected. When markets closed with the requirements for social distancing, that a lot of those who were affected were the 60 to 80% of women that had to be found in this informal sector. The second thing that we know is that COVID has had a huge impact on the unpaid care burden of women. What we still don't know is how much this has then impacted the economic activities. I was just chatting with someone before now. A lot of the schools where our children go opened yesterday. So even as we do this, we are balancing between trying to get kids to learn as well as participating economic activities like this webinar. And that's happening across board, even to rural women, who form the majority of the labor for livestock. So obviously we are expecting that there'll be some impacts there. Some impacts there as well. There's also some positive things that we know that even in countries, in situations where women have been involved in the response strategies that we've been seeing some bigger impacts, some more inclusive recovery efforts. Now, even from previous research, if you look at household consumption of especially protein rich foods, including animal source foods, we know there's a lot of gender barriers, cultural barriers that have led to intra-household allocation of these foods that's often quite inequitable. And when these foods are in shortage, then we actually expect those inequalities to actually grow. So there are some things we know from previous research and we can hypothesize that with COVID and the impact we're seeing of COVID that these inequalities are gonna grow. But we also have some positive, we know we have lessons of how we can actually get around this by engaging women, by listening to women's voices, by making sure that we are targeting some of the interventions to those who are much more vulnerable and those who are more affected by the pandemic. And thank you so much for that, Jamima. You've given quite a bit of nuggets of information that is actually answering quite a number of the questions that I had leading forward. In terms of, for the rest of the panelists, how robust or how reliable is the evidence-based in regards to what we're currently seeing? In terms of what are we learning and what is missing? When I open this to anyone on the panel. Yes, as far as nutrition is concerned, there exists a lot of literature and knowledge based on the effect of COVID-19 on nutrition. But still a lot has to be done. There's need for stable and reliable surveillance, nutrition-related surveillance and systems put in place that are either web-based or on-base to ensure that we have, we are able to constantly monitor consumption patterns, food market systems and food availability. With that maybe, we are able to more likely identify populations that are suffering or populations that are at risk. And of course we are able to have timely response to some of the factors that are negatively affecting the nutrition status of the most vulnerable over from my side. Right. Anyone else? If I can come in from the African Union Commission side, the evidence we have on the trend of food security on the continent is from the tracking of the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program, CADAP. And the report from 2019 showed that the African continent was not on track towards achieving zero hunger by 2025 because that is the target that heads of state and government committed themselves between Malabo in 2014 to achieve zero hunger by 2025. So when we traced the performance of countries between 2015 and 2019, only one country out of the 49 countries that reported in 2019 was on track towards achieving that target. And that country was Uganda. So already, and this was before COVID-19 hit the world. So a lot of work needs to be done at member state level to increase investments in those areas that can increase food availability access to improve nutrition on the continent. And so what we're observing with the effect of COVID is exacerbating an already bad situation on the continent that we are not making progress towards eliminating hunger. Thank you. If I can come in next. I think from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation point of view, we think that there's a huge gap of knowledge and understanding in objective data on the demand and supply and in order to how best to improve the supply within Africa for the African continent consumption. In an optimal way, balancing the downsides of climate, the downsides of intensification with optimizing the production to meet the demand. In an economic sustainable way, socially sustainable way as well as environmentally sustainable way. So you can't know all three sustainability angles are important, but you need to make sure that, whatever we do, it's an optimal balancing act rather than just one versus the other. Just going back to Dr. Godfrey's point, we know in Africa disproportionately, livestock contributes to a huge amount of GDP, agricultural GDP, nutritional and food security as we have heard previously. But the investment and the priority that is based by governments is very disconnected to the contribution it makes in multiple economic growth, nutritional importance and agriculture GDP in terms of production-wise. So if you had that information properly, that will drive the policy to invest in, under the startup program, there was a intention to invest 30% of the 10% of national investment by countries into livestock, but that's not happening at all. So hopefully we can fill those gaps of information, knowledge so that database decisions can be made by policy makers and therefore optimize the production to meet the demand and needs of African continent. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Just to bridge on to what you've just spoken about, Sam, is Joyce actually works for a development program in Kenya and they recently did a study on the effect of the pandemic on the livestock sector in the Azals in Kenya. Joyce, can you share with us two or three of the biggest impacts you are seeing on the ground? Yes. One of the impacts that COVID is having, especially with the county governments in Kenya, is the issue of the physical impact. Most of the counties rely basically on the national government funding and they are supposed to also generate some of the local money from taxes and other properties. However, due to the closure of these markets and major livestock markets, it had an impact on the revenue streams at the county level. And therefore what we are seeing, we are seeing counties are being stressed and they are facing some vegetarian constraints as a result of COVID. We also saw that some counties are trying to reallocate some of the funds that they are given for development functions to the health sector. And also some of them are even trying to reallocate money that is made for nutrition to the health sector. So it's like the health sector, and I agree, it's now the priority of both the national government as well as the county government. But again, the question would be, if now money is reallocated to the health sector, then what happens to the other sectors and also and specifically the nutrition sector? Of course, this is going to have very gravious implications on the nutrition security in Northern Kenya because this study was basically carried out in Northern Kenya among the pastoral communities. Another key finding was that the animal health service delivery has also been greatly affected. Study shows that most of the aggravates who are operating in Northern Kenya have greatly reduced their sales. This is an implication that fewer farmers or fewer pastoralists are going to buy drugs from their aggravates. And this will of course have a great impact on disease outbreaks. And therefore the food and nutrition security in the region will also be greatly affected. One last key finding from the study was that most of the households or most of the pastoralists have now reduced their intake of, or their dietary diversity has actually changed. They are taking in more of the carbohydrates, they are skipping meals, some of them are doing one meal a day and therefore their food and nutrition security is at stake. The consumption rate, I think around 60%, within one week consumption reported to, we've been taking a protein in their meal. So at least something need to be done as far as the pastoral community is concerned because what we know is that their food and nutrition security has been at stake for over a very long time and COVID is likely to affect them over from my side. All right, thank you so much Joyce. Godfrey, according to what you're hearing and considering the expectations of Malabo 2025 and the impact it will have on the sector, how is the commission working with agricultural ministers to ensure that we stay on track? Yeah, thank you, Muzoni. Let me make two points. The first one is to say that Africa's food systems were vulnerable for COVID-19. And if you have been observing the trend within our sector in the last three years, the sector has been hit by three shocks. We had the four Army women in 2018 and that affected about 52 countries on the continent. In 2019, we had the desert locusts within the especially the East African region, decimating crops and pasture for livestock. And in 2020, we now have COVID-19. And so these are three shocks to Africa's agriculture food systems on top of other environmental natural effects like climate change that results in two droughts and the floods across the continent, all impacting negatively on our system. So what we at the African Union Commission, and this is my second point, are doing given our continental mandate is to mobilize political leaders, especially ministers bring them together to discuss the short and medium term impacts of COVID-19 and what can be done to build back better and stronger. So in April this year, we organized a meeting of ministers of agriculture and was attended by 45 ministers from across the continent, out of 55, huge meeting, discussing the impacts of COVID-19 on food systems and so on. Now out of that ministerial meeting was a ministerial declaration with clear actions calling for interventions by member states. Some of those interventions were within agriculture, others by ministers of trade or ministers of trade and others by ministries of finance. And those ministers of trade and finance were not in the upper meeting. So what we did to make sure that we complete the discussion in July, at the end of July this year, we organized now a tripartite meeting that brought together ministers of agriculture, ministers of trade and ministers of finance. So that the intervention that ministers of agriculture want and those of trade want, as long as they have financial implications, the ministers of trade are in the room listening in to see how the resources need to be either mobilized internally or repurposed or sought extra resources from either loans or donations to intervene. So it was a huge meeting to bring together these ministers to have a joint action agenda as the outcome of that ministerial meeting. So we as African Union Commission are doing mobilization, political mobilization and advocacy to bring together the stakeholders to address these challenges that are being addressed in a cohesive manner but also creating platforms for lesson learning and experience sharing across the continent. Okay, thank you so much Godfrey. I think I'd like to pull a question from the chat group. I think there's a very interesting conversation that's going on there. And it would only be fair for us to hear from some of the chats. What are some of the questions? There's a question here that's directed to Sam and the question is, what do you see as some ways African countries can influence how people in the global or North or development countries perceive livestock? That's a great question. I wish I knew that because then my job will be done. I think I have been watching that chat as well. And as some people saying about, Africa has no problem with livestock per se. But in the Western world, in the Northern world, people with plenty, eating animal-sourced foods have become more of a choice rather than the only or the most accessible way to have nutritious food. And people are increasingly, there are so many anti-sentiments are growing and that is influencing global policymakers and global influencers, including donors and investors. So again, the point, again, as we are talking about building back better with this COVID crisis, we are in the vulnerable areas in the world, including Africa, has been affected. But as we build better, if you can communicate, if you can advocate for a sustainable way of growing rather than learning from the mistakes that the West has made, causing the damages, including increasing the management system or production systems that enhance the probability of patterns and jumping from one species to another species, including two humans. So if you can really build that back in a much more sustainable, balanced, optimal way and communicate and advocate that, that's probably the best we can do, in my opinion. And that's what we do at the foundation. That's what we try to communicate using the brand of the foundation as well. There was a question that was tabled to Godfrey on the chat. Godfrey, you spoke a bit on it, but I think it's important that everyone else hears. And the question is, do you think that the livestock sector will provide natural and nutritious food when we stop importing processed food? And this is an open question. It's not necessarily only for Godfrey. Well, I think for us as the African Union Commission, we take two positions on livestock. One will recognize the importance of livestock in improving people's livelihoods in as far as being a source of income is concerned. And as I think it was Sam who mentioned, almost close to 40% of Africa's GDP is from livestock. So it's very important as a source of income, as a source of livelihoods. But also the other perspective that we take is from the nutrition point of view. And I think it was Jameima who took some time to go through, or was it Joyce? The benefits of feeding on protein, especially from animal sources for kids under the age of five. And the impact that has on both the short-term and long-term growth and productivity as a human being. And so we advocate for production and availability of these protein sources to our children under the age of five. And thirdly, we hope that with the coming on board of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area when it becomes operational, that they will be increased in traditional trade in agricultural products, including livestock products. So that we reduce the level of import of these foods from outside of the continent. As you know, at the moment, the estimate is between the five to four to five billion dollars a year that Africa spends on food importation. If this can be saved by producing on the continent, including livestock products, I think that would be better for our farmers and that would be better for consumers. So if I may add to that as well, just to give you a little bit of a little bit of a summary just to, you know, the imports and a process for importing versus produced locally producing. At the moment, at the current level of productivity, the demand is unlikely to be met. The consumption demand is unlikely to be met by the local production adequately and in a quality and in a timely way, based on the data we have. This is where I mentioned before, the supply demand data is not complete or accurate, but directionally at least what the data suggests is the current production, the efficiency of production is inadequate to meet the demand. And therefore, if you abruptly stop or block the imports, it's likely that the prices can go up and also the availability and affordability might be negatively impacted for the African consumers. Now, having said that, this is why we think, you know, we should rapidly increase productivity. There are so many, you know, there's huge yield gaps that exist in African production versus what is possible even in the given agroecology. So, you know, if you can focus on really increasing the production and productivity of African livestock, then we can sort of bridge that much faster and effectively. Thanks. Actually, to follow up on what you've just spoken about, Sam, there's a question from the chat that actually asks about, do we know enough about the de-urbanization impact basically of people migrating back to rural areas during COVID in African countries and what it's doing positively and negatively in terms of food security and natural resource integrity and productivity? I'll open this to anyone. Yeah, I'll let Sam answer that. I think we have seen, and not just in Africa, we've seen cases in India as well, where there is, we're calling it the reverse migration from urban areas to rural areas, and that's gonna have implications on several things. One is that, and especially when you get more young people going back into rural areas, we are likely to see a renewed focus on development of rural areas. So, rural development basically starts to become much more prominent as previously depopulated rural areas start to become much more vibrant. But within the African context, what we are also likely to see is pressure on land resources because as people go back to rural areas, then there's much more demand for production resources and especially Viti and people who currently might not own land and that have to survive. So, that's something we need to think about, but I see it also as a huge opportunity for the livestock. Sector in terms of how do we, as Sam says, how do we start thinking about much more efficient ways and productive ways of raising livestock productivity? We've been, for example, investing the last five years with ACPE on how you can use insect-based feed to feed livestock and reduce the competition between human and animal food for corn, for soybean, for fish meal, et cetera. So, I also see a positive in the sense that it makes us, even from a research perspective, think much more creatively about not just how to develop rural areas, but also how to invest much more in increasing productivity when you have much more demand for resources like land. And that's a huge opportunity for livestock, for small livestock, for aquaculture and other search systems that require less land, but could do with much more efficient production methods. And I would guess that would also have, it's easy to look at that reverse migration is bad for environment, but if you're really thinking creatively about it, it could actually have some positive impacts on the environment as well. Well, I can come in here on that point. I don't think I do agree with those observations. I think there are speculatory observations, if you ask me. Nobody has concrete data to make strong statements about this de-analyzation or reverse migration. I think we need to give this time and those who are in the field of research, we need to have data maybe over a two, three year period, rather than a period of six months when COVID has hit the continent, because it's just from February and March to now that you see people basically not abandoning urban life, but escaping the crowded urban centers to go and survive in rural areas. That does not mean that they don't want to go back in urban centers. And so I don't think it's right to say that we are seeing a sustained de-analyzation or urban rural migration phenomenon. I don't think that is correct. But I want to think about that. Yeah, I think Godfrey, we are seeing some trends. It's important that we monitor those trends in the next two to three years to see what happens. But I guess that's also some of the problems we have that when we do not want to be reactionary to it, that we also need to be predicting, given some of the anecdotal data and some of the preliminary data that we are seeing what's gonna happen. So I'm actually not, I would say we need to monetize, but we also need to start anticipating what the longer-term impact of this pandemic are going to be and a big role for researchers is also to start helping us to model what that might look like. So I don't think we have to wait until two to three years now to deal with what those issues that might arise are, but we need to start thinking about what it will mean for agriculture. Oh, I like how it's getting juicy. So that I can let everyone have an opportunity to close. What do you think are one of, at least give me one bold next step that we need to take to tackle the pandemic, harm or grasp an opportunity. I'll go around the room. I'll start with Godfrey. What do you think? Well, they are both short and medium-term opportunities to think about recovery from the pandemic. Godfrey, I only ask for one. I just want to hear from you. What is the one bold one you think that needs to be urgently grasped on to? I think increasing financing for agriculture would go a long way to build resilient food systems because we observe again from the 2019 cut-up by annual review report that there was not a single country on the continent that was meeting the cut-up target of spending 10% of the national expenditure on agriculture, not a single country over a four-year period. And so when you starve the agriculture sector of resources, definitely you can eat both in the short and medium term. So the appeal would be for our member states to increase financing going into the agriculture sector. Thank you, Godfrey. Godfrey, sorry. Sam. Okay. My first one would have been what Godfrey said about increased investments, but the next one would be given the visibility, the positive opportunity that the COVID has created is to improve the animal health and well-being or welfare of animals in the country. And with that investment, if we can build the system, one disease at a time developing vaccines or campaigns for control of one disease at a time, instead of doing that, if you can really strengthen the veterinary services that underpins a functioning of veterinary professional veterinary services, performance of veterinary services, that would be a fantastic opportunity to sort of exploit that and work with OIE, which is trying to do the performance of veterinary services in a very well established to do that. And it's a really good opportunity to strengthen the veterinary services. All right, thank you very much. Jemima. I think my one big one is to make sure we are focusing on people and what's happening to people and the impact on people and make sure we are redirecting our resources in ways that we are not leaving anyone behind. Great. Joyce. Yes. For me, that one big thing that need to be done and the opportunity that COVID has created is the opportunity to adopt improved technologies. This is because some of these calamities, some of these effects are almost inevitable. And therefore, know that every country has the role to ensure that its citizens are food secure. Then adoption of improved technologies would be a key way, a sure way of ensuring this is done. Here, I'm talking about adoption of technologies like the e-extension, for example, to ensure that farmers, personnel is getting information with when they need it, how they need it, and also for the spoilage. During our study, we saw that people and people, actors in the livestock value chain, they are getting a lot of losses as a result of spoilage. Milk, meat is getting spoiled. So improved technologies will be an opportunity that COVID has created that is likely to improve both the nutrition security, food security as well as improve the economic development. All right, thank you very much. I think that was indeed a hard talk and I really appreciate the time and contributions that you've given to this discussion. I know this is just but the beginning of this topic, and I hope that there's a lot of learnings that we've gotten from here. And we'd like to hear from Bonnie, who will now talk about the next part where we'd like contributions from our recs. Bonnie? Thank you so much, Muthoni. I just want to join you in thanking the panelists for their contributions and really raising some key issues in that panel. It was a hard talk, we could see the exchanges. Thank you so much. Well done, everyone. In this meeting, we have representatives from the regional economic communities who would like to open up these sessions for their contributions. We know that they've been working on the regional response plans for COVID-19. So we'd like them to share some two to three highlights on what is coming up on some of these plans. So to start off, they have about three minutes each. To start off, we will have a representative from ECHOAS, who is Dr. Vivian Iwar, to share some highlights on the regional response plans. Over to you, Dr. Vivian. Good afternoon, everyone. Beautiful discussions. We all listen to the speakers, the challenges are really clear and mostly the same everywhere. Of course, with individual peculiarities in the different countries based on the subsystem systems and processes, pre-pandemic and of course, the management approaches that have been used to control the pandemic. In the ECHOAS region, the coordinated approaches learned and the systems and processes built from the Ebola virus disease outbreak experience have been of great value in dealing with the pandemic. Still, there have been challenges such that were presented in session one, including the fact that farmers were given our products free. There were delays in arrival of necessary imports and of course, the consequences of food and security and nutrition security, livelihoods and economic growth. A major challenge that remains is how to open up safely. And this goes to the issue of opening up schools making up the economy and building up more resilient populations. Our coordinated approach in the region for agriculture, development and environment issues are hinged on two broad policies. The ECHOAS agriculture policy commonly referred to as the ECHOAB and the ECHOAS environment policy referred to as the ECHOAB. All strategic action plans emanate from these policies. From there, we get the strategies on food and nutrition security. We have the animal health and welfare strategy, the gender and livelihoods strategy, climate change and resilience and et cetera. And we also have disease specific strategies such as the one on PPR, on rabies and on others. This wholesome approach supports the broad vision and goal and support appropriate coordination and harmonization efforts in the ECHOAS which became very useful in moving in one direction at the outbreak of the pandemic. And indeed in helping to identify where needs were higher and sharing resources accordingly. In the livestock sector, we adopted four main approaches, control of tards, trans-boundary animal diseases and zoonosis, strengthening the one health collaboration platforms and systems, strengthening the ICT systems for veterinary service delivery, strengthening and building partnerships. But I think additionally, research for livestock development is an area that needs to be explored particularly as it relates to the development of basic technologies and communication tools between farmers and service delivery. The focus on animal disease control is on economically significant trans-boundary animal diseases and currently mass vaccinations against PPR that were started in identified gap areas went on immediately movement resumed in the region. And our strategy is based on progressive expansion of that strategy of controlling PPR. As we all know, for low-resourced homes and communities, the one or two goats or sheep that free range could stand between the family falling deeper into poverty and all losing resilience with direct consequences on livelihoods. A loss of such a resource could mean the difference between a child's school face being paid or not. And in most communities also, the goats and sheep are owned by women and this has clear implications for losing those animals. So the prevention of control of PPR is a major focus for us. On One Health, due to the outbreak of Ebola, we established a One Health platform and started building systems of approaching diseases through the One Health approach. The prioritization of seven zoonotic diseases in the region for control, including rabies is one of the highlights of establishing that platform. And indeed, there's a strategy for rabies control focused on the One Health approach. Technology has become critical also, not just for the daily work as this meeting itself shows, but also for field work. The Egoist region is adopting and strengthening technologies for future interactions and particularly for surveillance. For example, this kind of meeting was hosted in what we called a discussion forum in the region under the Palavra Tree with over 300 participants, including a variety of stakeholders. That was due to use of technology. We are learning and deploying basic technologies such as geographical position systems for a certaining coordination for field work. I believe that strong partnerships between the livestock sector and the ICT sector will be crucial going forward in supporting work in the livestock sector as this will enable them to know our specific needs and create products that suit such needs. Strengthening partnerships and aligning priorities and goals for more efficient delivery of actions such as the ICT I have mentioned, One Health partnerships, research, financials, and especially producers who usually have knowledge of their needs is very critical in advocacy or communication in an up and downward manner, in a down and upward manner, as well as in a sideways manner. And all these are being deployed in the region for coordination purposes. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Vivian, for sharing about some of the concrete practices and strategies that ECHOAS is deploying in this phase. We will now move on to the representative from Stata. And this will be Dr. Domingo Stefanias, over to you. Yes, thank you very much for the opportunity. I think I will repeat what Godfrey had been saying. The question is primarily how do we ensure continuity of livestock development in the context of strict COVID-19 containment measures? Because this was the process that was adopted by all the member states in our continent and the entire world. So that is the main challenge. And to this effect, within SADC, the Council of Ministers approved the guidelines for cross-border transport operations across the region to minimize or to mitigate these containment measures and ensure that the inputs and agricultural products can move from one place to another, even from outside the region or to outside the region. And these guidelines have been expanded in collaboration with Komeza, a South African community, which forms the tripartite, so that the whole region under SADC, is an African community in Komeza, could facilitate and mitigate this situation. The other aspects that Godfrey has mentioned the commitments that the ministers responsible for food security and agriculture, fisheries, and I mean from the African continent adopted. And from the regional perspective in SADC, the ministers adopted the commitment that were produced by African Union Commission, FAO. The aspect that I would like to highlight is that we should not reinvent the wheel. Godfrey has spoken very well. Africa is not doing well in terms of agriculture. And in SADC region is not exception. We have assessed by annual report of the implementation of Malabo Declaration, 2015-2025, we are not doing well. The implementation of SDGs is there. SDG1 ending poverty and SDG2 zero hunger, we are really progressing very little. So in our context, we have the livestock development program, 2017-2021, that was approved in November, 2017. And these livestock development program is fully part of the implementation of the SADC regional agriculture policy, which was approved in 2014. And our regional agriculture policy is what we call the cut-up compact. So the instruments are there. And basically to implement the regional agriculture policy in 2017, the SADC member states, they have approved what we call the regional agriculture investment plan, 2017-2022. So the strategy is there, the plan is there. In terms of livestock development program, which is implementing the regional agriculture policy, it follows four objectives. The objective one is to enhance sustainable agriculture production, productivity and competitiveness. And here, within the livestock development program, we are improving farm access to improved genetic material and the adoption of biotechnology in livestock development. We're also addressing aspects related to enhancing conservation and sustainable use of animal genetic resources for food and agriculture. And in that context, in July, 2020, we have approved the SADC Animal Genetics Resource Conservation and Utilization Strategy. The other aspect that we're addressing here is improved management of charts to transponder animal diseases. And in that context, we have produced the food and mouth disease control pathway in June, 2010. We have also produced the SADC PPR eradication roadmap in November, 2017. We have produced the highly pathogenic Avian Influenza Preparedness Plan in May, 2018. We have produced the SADC guidelines on commodity-based trade approaches for managing food and mouth disease risk in beef in Southern Africa. This was done last year in June. We have also produced the SADC strategy for elimination of dog-mediated human rabies in July, 2020. And also we are finalizing the One Health strategy in related to antimicrobial resistance in collaboration with OIE, WHO, and FAO. In the area of agricultural research and development in livestock, we are working with our Center for Coordination of Agricultural Research Development in Southern Africa in the strategy to address aspect-specific related livestock. So we have produced this year a 10-year strategy in support for the implementation of livestock development plan. We're also working in terms of enhancing regional and national agricultural information management systems. And specifically for livestock, we have developed the livestock information management system that is part of the overall agricultural information management system. And in this context, we're working with FAO that they are finalizing the overall agricultural information management system. In terms of the improvement, in terms of the regional and international trade and access to markets and agricultural products, we have improved compliance with the SADC protocol on trade and addressing specifically sanitary and vital sanitary aspects. And also we have been working towards engaging public and private sector into investing in agricultural value chains. And in that regard, we are currently finalizing the process of establishment of the Agricultural Development Fund, which was approved in August, 2017. We have started also last year, established the Forum for Agrinvest in order to engage the private sector, including small and medium enterprise. And also we have established the SADC Business Forum in August, 2019 to include the bigger private sector in the implementation of the agricultural policy, which includes the life of development program. So basically these are the actions that are there. The only call that we are doing for the member state is to implement it so that really we transform the agriculture. And I think we should not be worrying on trying to find new ways. I think the strategies are there. The cut up is here. We are not implementing cut up as it should be. So it's a matter. I think COVID came to remind that you are not doing well. And I think we have to move from strategies to the real work. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Domingos, for reminding us that we need to do better built on existing instruments and not reinvent the wheel. Thank you for sharing on SADC activities. The last representative is from EGAD. And this is Dr. Ameha Sepsiba. Over to you. Okay. Thank you very much for the introduction. I work for EGAD Center for Pastoral and Wildlife Development, EGAD is the original economic community in Eastern Africa. And I will give a quick highlight of the various feedback we have collected from countries on the impact of COVID and what we, as EGAD, what we have done is members, states, and partners to respond. So in the region, EGAD, I think most of you are aware that the EGAD region is very rich in livestock resources. And these livestock resources are very important in terms of livelihood, food security, and nutrition. And also, of course, in also as a source of income, including generating hard currencies from export of meat and live animals to Middle East and North Africa. Some of the challenges that have been observed during this pandemic, the key ones, restricted movement by various countries. And this movement affected veterinary services like surveillance, like vaccination, distribution of inputs like vaccines and drugs. And also, some produce are not reaching to the required market. And also, animals are not able to be, to be sold in the required markets. And this has affected heavily the livelihood of pastoral, agro-pastoral communities. The other major effect was market closure. And this affected seriously also the gate price. In some places, we have observed and reports shows 40 to 60% of price reduction. We did some rapid survey from EGAD with countries. And also, on the other hand, if you look at the price of cereals has increased. And this has been because of transportation costs and also some unfair practice of brokers. So in some instances, like, for example, in South Sudan, the report shows 50% rising prices. And you can see the pastoral, agro-pastoral community has to sell more animals compared to pre-COVID to buy the same amount of cereals. This is very important, which has helped us also in the strategy development, which I will be talking later. And there were also reduced slouter operation for various, some data collected. The slouter houses at domestic slouter houses and they also export slouter houses as to do at 40 to 60% reduce capacity. And the other observation we have had is the meat, for example, from EGAD countries is exported to Middle East, Gulf countries, cargo space, and also cargo fare has increased highly and this affects the whole value chain. For example, one figure I can give you, one of the airline is asking 1.3 USD per kg of meat to transport from EGAD country to Dubai. So these are some of the key observation within the livestock, the feedback we have gathered and so observation reports to the countries. And EGAD has developed two important regional strategies with member states and partners to support countries, minimize the effect of pandemic and recovery. One is a food security and nutrition response strategy. This cover three important hazards, the COVID, desert locust and the flats, which has been earlier mentioned. And this strategy has been finalized and submitted for resource mobilization within and also from outside. It covers emergency response, preparedness and capacity enhancement, coordination and recovery and resilience building, including trade facilitation and promotion. The second strategy is economic recovery strategy. This is also to be finalized very soon. So I think there are a number of details, but maybe there are also discussions we can cover through discussion. I shall stop here, over to you. Thank you so much, Dr. Setsipe, for sharing with us some of the disruptions that you've seen in markets in the EGAD region and how this is affecting the incomes of the astral and agro-astral communities. You also noted that there are impacts on the exports that this has also been affected. But what is good is there are strategies that the region has come up with, which are seeking, which will address some of these impacts. Thank you so much to the three presenters in this session. What seems to come out from all the three regions is that the ministers are committed, the commitment and ministers to address these challenges, working together with the African-Indian Commission and together with the other partners. So this is really a key step. And two, we heard from the three that there are policies in place and strategies which need to be put into action through the plans that have been developed. And for example, there's the food security and nutrition strategies, which can be deployed in addressing some of the impacts that have been brought about by the pandemic. And there's also some economic recovery strategies that are in place. So this is good to note that the regions are active. They have the plans and they're really keen to strengthen and move this forward. From the Echo Arts region, just to highlight that they are really sticking to strengthen if a terminal services for effective disease control. And so they are also repocusing and adopting the One Health approach. They would like to see that strengthened in the region. So in summary, this is what the recs have shared with us. And there's just again to remember that let's build on existing instruments and strengthen some of the approaches that are already at hand and working with the partners in this effort. So again, thank you so much for sharing with us and continue to post some of the notes on the chart so that we can pick up this excellent work that is going on in the region. But it was also interesting to hear the presenters really indicate the initial challenges when the pandemic started and how I've lost you for a minute. Yeah, I hope I'm back. Michael, can you hear me? Yes, we can, Bunny. Go ahead. Okay, thanks. My lights went off. So thanks, but I'm back. So thanks to the recs and let's hope that we continue to share on the charts and as we go to the other sessions tomorrow. But I also wanted to pick up from the pandemic panel. Thank you again for the excellent sharing and presentation and raising some key issues. You raised some areas that on some of the impacts that most worry you. And what I was left with, the key not takeaway for me was a concern about the state of food insecurity in the continent that this is really growing at alarming rates. So it's a great concern. And this was highlighted from the African-Union Commission. So it's something that really the pandemic adds on an already difficult situation of state of food insecurity. And so there was also a concern about the hidden effects of COVID. That is it's really going to hit hard the most vulnerable in the communities. And so this is a great concern. So what are some of the responses of addressing these challenges that were highlighted? We heard that some of the bold next steps that could be taken include the need to strengthen paternal services. So this issue of disease control keeps coming up as we heard also from the RECs. So strengthening the paternal services, it's one that came up and they need to increase investments. There's already an under investment in the livestock sector. So the pandemic adds on that pressure. So there's a call to increase investment by the government and other partners. There's a call to focus on people that really let's pay attention. The most vulnerable group in the communities might struggle more or less. Let's not leave anyone behind. No one to be left behind, focus on people. And also this is seen as an opportunity for the livestock sector to deploy and increase adoption of improved technologies for sustainable livestock production. So these are some of the highlights of colleagues that I picked up from these two sessions, the panel, excellent panel and the great sharing from the RECs. So it gives me a pleasure this time just to thank you all. I took the time to wrap up as my colleague Martin Barassa was not on the call, he had last minute challenges with connection. So I hope you will continue to have a look at the chat and also let's remember that the outputs from this meeting will contribute to the global livestock holder platform meeting later this month and also to the events that are lined up for next year. So colleagues, just want to thank you all for your great contribution in session one and session two. We have come to the end of our session. I just want to take the time to remind everyone that tomorrow we start session three at 14 hours East Africa time. And the Zoom link was already shared. I think my colleagues might resend that. So we hope that you'll be able to join us and continue these rich discussions that we've had in these two sessions. And let's continue to look at what are some of the priorities and actions that can help us to build back better together as the different stakeholders in the global agenda for sustainable livestock. Thank you so much. Everyone have a good evening, good morning or good night depending on where you are. Thank you again to all the facilitators, the presenters and to everyone who is participating here. Bye. Thank you. And remember to visit tomorrow, you can look in a bit earlier and visit the chef before the two o'clock meeting. There's quite a lot that is on show there. And thank you so much. Bye bye.