 as well. At this point, I think let me hand over to Boni to take us through the next session. Maybe for the, as we have also newly joined people, let me formally introduce Boni here. Boni, so Boni Sumoio is Director General of the Presidency of Ethiopia. So Boni, let me hand over to you to take us through the next session. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Keep sending the message. Thank you very much. Say hi. Confirm you can hear me. Can I hear you? Yes, sure. We can hear you. We can hear you, Boni. Okay. Thank you so much. It is indeed my pleasure again today to welcome everyone to the Global Agenda for Sustainable Life Stock, the Multistakeholder Partnership Meeting. This year's meeting is being held under the theme, lessons from COVID-19 for building back a better future through sustainable livestock. I wish to recognize all the dignitaries and the delegates that are present here today. The goal of this year's meeting is to identify COVID-19's impact and strategize stakeholder responses worldwide in order to build forward a more sustainable future by addressing challenges and opportunities in the livestock sector. Today, we are starting session three of the Africa One Region Meeting, which is for English-speaking countries. Again, special welcome to those who are joining us for the first time. Yesterday, we had amazing sessions one and two, and I can see the charts confirms that it's good that people were engaging and they found it informative. Just a quick reminder that the objectives of this Africa One Region Meeting are to present regional impacts of COVID-19 around the four sustainability domains, and the four domains are food and nutrition security, livelihoods and economic growth, animal health and animal welfare, and climate and resource use. The second objective, colleagues, is to identify options in the short, medium, and long run on how the livestock sector could improve its response through a sustainable livestock approach, with solutions of multi-stakeholder nature. This would be the main focus of today's session. Recognizing that we will have contributions for multiple stakeholders who include representatives from government, research, academia, private sector, civil society, farmer organizations, multilateral and regional organizations, as well as investors. So, we really look forward again to another vibrant session. Focusing now on today's agenda, we will address, look at some quick insights from the previous sessions. We will also have a group work session, where we look at some priorities and actions on how we can build better together. We'll then have some closing remarks and next steps. So, at this point, I'm pleased to welcome my colleague, Cynthia, who will take us through the next activity. Over to you, Cynthia. Cynthia Muko. Thank you very much, Bonnie. Yesterday, I'm going to give you the initial messages that we received from the working groups. If you recall, yesterday, we went into working groups, into four working groups. And these working groups were around food and nutritional security, livelihoods and economic growth, animal health and welfare, climate and natural resource use. So, in these groups, we discussed four questions. Next slide, please. We were looking at what are the positive or negative impacts of the pandemic? Which of them have been most significant, I mean? How are we observing or measuring these impacts? What are the three hidden or overlooked opportunities that the pandemic has offered? And then, in the chat room, we asked the question, what's the most interesting or key message you took from this session? So, we looked at what the group was done in the groups, and we came to, and this is the message as we took away. We go to the next slide. Overall, the perception was negative. So, overall, in all the groups, we had 100 points that were recorded of both positive and negative. 100 messages were given. Overall, out of their 100, we can see that 73 of them were negative. So, most people identified that the pandemic has had a negative effect on the sector. However, what was very surprising to us was that the climate and natural resource use teams had the most, recorded the most positives, as opposed to negatives. Possibly, to do with the environment is doing fine without the human and, like, livestock interventions. So, that was, that stood out for us. But everyone else, it's negative overall. The impact has been negative in these four domains, in these other three domain areas. On the next slide, we see some of the messages we received, some of the positive impacts would include environmental benefits. So, we are seeing cleaner and less disturbed environments. Another one was greater collaboration has come about because of the pandemic. We are seeing more localization. So, due to the breakaway from, we are seeing, due to the pandemic, people are breaking away from imports and then there has been a rediscovery of local markets. So, we are seeing shorter value chains that are growing and local small operators are also growing. So, in essence, you can actually see the local, at the local level, systems are more resilient. There is also a growing demand for healthy food. We are also seeing that life is also becoming a promising, being seen as a promising business opportunity by the youth. So, overall, there are a few of the messages that were coming from these positive impacts. On the negative, next slide, please, we saw that there's been a lot of loss of markets, labor shortages, decreasing demand, reduced access to services and inputs due to, of course, the distracted service provision, increased food price, loss of income. And then there's also reduced consumption of animal-sourced food, leading also to tied to declining consumer confidence. Those were all recorded from your group work. So, how, on the question, the next slide is on the question, how we are measuring, how we're measuring this impact. Because of the lockdown, a lot of how it's measured is anecdotal and observable. Some virtual services have been conducted. But if you really want to measure impact, we can do an impact assessment. It would be very difficult to do an impact assessment when we can't get hold of household data. You can't do household, you can't get household data from a distance. The informal system is also very hard to measure. And we know that this is largely where the livestock sector sits. So, it's difficult. However, people are using market prices as an indicator of activity and demand. And also we are seeing digital apps providing a paradigm shift in how we obtain and share data and knowledge. So, the hidden opportunities that the pandemic has presented include digitalization, localization. We are seeing the one health push has become stronger. So, we are using the pandemic to apply one health more widely. It's also, the pandemic has also brought together all kinds of people around a common issue. So, we have seen a lot of PPP, the public public partnerships. But they are also asking ourselves, is there a need to reinvest the way we are doing businesses or the way organizations are modeled. So, because of this we, the opportunities that have presented themselves. On the next slide, when we looked at the key messages that were put in the chat room, the key takeaways that you told us that you got from the last session, the group work. It's clear that major value chain disruption is happening. Digitalization and digital expansion is driving innovation in delivery, reach and impact. There are significant gender impacts, though this was not really impacted in the sessions. There is indirect impact on food systems. The indirect impact on food systems are really underrated. Our systems are more resilient than we thought, especially at the local level. Clear, of course, it's very difficult at the moment to measure the impact of the pandemic because of the lockdown and many other reasons. But lots of new opportunities are emerging. Also, this is the capital THE moment for one health. So, the question we have to ask ourselves as we close this session is do we, so will we rethink what we do or will we return to the whole normal? How will we go back? That's what we took away from the group. And at this point, I want to give it also to two members. I want to give an opportunity to two members of the organizing committee of this meeting to give brief comments on the reflections of the day. So, if we go to the next slide, I'm going to be introducing first Mr. Robin Bay, who is from the State Department of Livestock Ministry of Agriculture for Kenya. Robin, give us your reflections on the day one. I hope it's on. Robin? Thank you very much, Sidia. Yes, I'm in the meeting. I want to thank you very much for that insight of what really conspired yesterday. It was very rich with ideas. Good afternoon, everybody, and good morning to others maybe in West Africa. I want to just mention a few things related to yesterday's discussions and what I think are moving forward as far as sustainable life talk is involved. This agenda, I would say, as we discussed and what has come out very strongly is the fact that we do note livestock as a big contribution to most of the states in terms of economies. That is a number of communities in our countries. In Africa, there are a lot on livestock, but you also note that there's no financial support from the member countries. This was mentioned yesterday and the revisiting of Malabar declaration that stated that agriculture is supported with 10% of GDPs of respective countries. We realized almost none of the countries is taking on board that guideline. They also noticed that there are adequate instruments. We are talking about policies and strategies as well as goodwill in terms of addressing the issues that are emerging in the industry, that is livestock, but we are not implementing them fully. Therefore, we realize a limited adoption of the technologies that we do develop either because the transfer methods or approaches in terms of communication is not as effective and this has an effect in our production systems that may not be addressing the emerging issues that require attention. This workshop is meant to look and come up with sustainable solutions. Moving forward, how do we address these emerging issues sustainably so that there's continuity in terms of long-term effects? I do revisited the global agenda for sustainable livestock where its main goal is direct interpretation of sustainable development goals as well as giving information so that countries can benefit from the best examples given. Africa has unique circumstances and approaches in production systems that we have. For instance, we have what we call pastoralism, anglopastoralism, which is crops versus livestock management systems, but you realize that these kinds of systems are not very well sustainable in the long run, though it has been there for decades. Going by the changes in environment, it will mean a challenge to maintain the same kind of approaches, but it is there. We have a lot of communities carrying it on. We may need to devise new methods to address it. We are here to harness the expertise, the knowledge, and also to ensure that we gain the information to develop the strategies moving forward that will enhance the livelihoods of our livestock communities. This is very important because as we face these challenges of COVID-19 and the climate change effects, definitely we have to think outside the box. In ensuring this, then we will need to look at how the products from our livestock is made accessible. It is affordable, safe, and also nutritious. As you know, when the youth or the young people are growing, they'll need a lot of products from our livestock, and therefore we stand to really pray our law in providing these as need arises. We need to look at the management and sustainable use of our environment in our production systems without, of course, compromising what we have inherited from our forefathers, the catchers, and the background. I know for these purposes, and I know in one forum, we were discussing about Africa and livestock, where we say most of the communities in Africa use livestock, particularly cattle, as financial bonds. Of course, in keeping the livestock, we should not also forget the sustainable aspects of our environment to ensure that this kind of approach is sustainable. Of course, others use their culture to ensure that they are able to meet certain social obligations within the communities. I want to lastly mention that there is need for all of us, particularly the member states in Africa, to continuously impact and develop strategies that will help in terms of having a sustainable production of our livestock, and also this being a forum where we are all acting in one direction to have what we call national multistakeholders platforms, so that we can be able to continually discuss and chat way forward on developing our livestock in a sustainable agenda, looking at the issues that would continuously help us in terms of improving our economies, providing safe food, and also ensuring that the animals are healthy, and we minimize what I would call the contribution towards the development of the climate change. So I'll just say thank you very much for this opportunity to say a few words and over to you, Cynthia. Thank you very much, Robin. Thank you. So Robin has reiterated the challenges of coming to the sector and has said what we have already said in the last three sessions, that this workshop is about getting solutions and creating actions. So he's given us two takeaways that we probably will discuss in the groups. How can we make sure the products of our livestock are accessible, safe, and nutritious? How can we ensure the livestock production systems are sustainable and resilient? These are some of the things maybe we can pick on in our group work. I want to hand over the floor to Mohamed Abubakar from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria. Mohamed, take it away. Thank you very much. Can you all hear me please? Yes, you're very clear. You're very clear, Mohamed. Go ahead. Hello. You're very clear, Mohamed. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Cynthia, for the introduction. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to give a brief commentary on the yesterday's section. As part of the organizing committee for this meeting, I am very pleased by the level of interest and engagement we saw through section one and two yesterday. This very important meeting is happening at the time when the world is at a standstill because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, an additional 130 million people will fall into the status of food insecurity. Consumption of animal source food has fallen by 37 percent base. We need to see livestock as the asset. It is to the rural poor. We are all aware that mortality due to the disease has been high for people with underlying diseases. Therefore, the place of good nutrition, particularly from animal protein, is essential as they say food is medicine. From the session we had yesterday, it is clear that government at all levels are taking a vital step to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in livestock production in Africa. At the opening section yesterday, the permanent Secretary, Federal Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Nigeria, Dr. Abdul Qadir Muazou spoke about the effort made by the Nigerian government and his counterpart from the PSOF State Department of Livestock, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock Fishery and Cooperative Kenya, that is Mr. Hari Kaitan. Also gave us insights on the effort in the effort of the Kenyan government. Other sections of the meeting, such as presentations, group discussion, virtual fair share, hard talks discussion also touched on the importance of government to either enact the right policies and increase funding for the livestock sector. My perspective is that African government need to involve and ensure adequate protein for its population. All order stakeholders, be it private sector, government partners, academia should all work together with government to ensure that Africa's livestock sector is assisted in all ways possible to ensure continuous production and good nutrition for Africa. In this regard, I really look forward to today's section where we will go co-create where the livestock sector can contribute. Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Mohammed. I think we had a few challenges towards the end, but it's okay. I think we heard. I think the big takeaway you're telling us is government needs to increase its investments in the sector. We are hearing we need strengthened political will from national governments, so that's good. It's a real message. We've had it through the session one and two, so that's a great takeaway for us to look into in our group discussion. So from here, I'm going to give it back to you, Boni. Thank you so much, Cynthia, Robin and Mohammed for that reflection and summary of day one. At this moment, we are expecting to have a brief reflection and key messages from the minister of animal resources and fisheries south Sudan, Honorebu Onyoti Adigo. I'm checking on the participant list. I don't see him online. I'm just giving a minute just to double check. He had the connection challenges earlier on. Honorebu Onyoti, if you are online, it's over to you now. And can my IT colleagues just check if he's managed to log in over? Okay, we will continue to see if he can come in online and then we will give him this slot. So again, thank you very much for your presentations in this reflection point. At this moment, we're going on to the working groups as earlier on indicated. And to do to guide us through this, it's my colleague, say hi. Say hi over to you. And welcome to those who have joined us now. Thank you. Thank you, Boni. As we did yesterday, we also have a parallel group discussion now. Yesterday, through the impacts of pandemic, today we focus more on planning the pandemic in articulating action to build back better. So this is what we are going to discuss. Our focus will be by seven Gazer clusters. As you can see, there is academics and research group, non-governmental organization, private sector, social movements, donor, multilateral organization and public sector. In each focus group, we'll also have a discussion question we need to address. There are two questions we are going to discuss under our specific group. Thank you. Let's get quickly reflection what you have been discussing in those parallel working groups. So this is time for us to reflect back. Let's do this question. It is like the yesterday process, but I have to explain again for the newly joined people, we do a chat question. I read the question for you and give you some 30-40 seconds and I will count from one to three. And then when I say go, you press enter. Until then, you write your response on your chat and hold it. When I say go, that is the time you press your chat. So here the question, as you can see it on the screen, one critical change we need to make to build back better from the pandemic in Africa. What is it for you? Please type this. Let me give you 30 seconds. When I say go, you press enter. Peter will help me from the other end to comment on your response. So write it down. I am about to count. One, two, three, go. Peter, you can take it from that. A collaboration, a digitalization, one health. These sound like similar things. Unity, that's an interesting one. Holistic approaches. Recognizing indigenous knowledge that goes nicely with that local focus we've been talking about. Back to natural livestock farming. Elizabeth, yes. Local partnerships. We're getting a lot of diversity. These are the most important changes. Better collaboration. Mobile first. Food safety. Why diversity? You want to see gender, right? Develop a framework for gender. Not just gender. Have a framework for gender. Policies. What are we seeing? Great working groups. That's very concrete. Better data. Government intervention. We want more of that or less of that. We don't know what that says. Local supply chains. That local is recurring again. The community producers, coordination, collective action. Okay. It's a big range of things again. Some of them are quite general, like resilience. That's a change we need to have. But there are some very specific changes here. More collaboration, more focus on local, more government action, more digitalization. Yes. Nice. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Let's move to the next question, maybe. Thank you. Please. Next slide for us. Okay. Here's the question. One action you can take in the next six months to build back better. One action you can take in the next six months to build back better. Write your response. Same process. I tell you to press enter when I say go. This is an individual action. So high, right? Yes. One, two, three, go. Peter, now it's your turn. I'm seeing that. Yes. What people want to raise the profile. They want to build capacity, get up, dust and go, collaborate more, build capacity, give a build capacity that's coming out, source mobilization, awareness raising, self-criticism. Yes. Advocacy for one health, not just advocacy, adding value to dairy products, capacity building, education. So a lot of emphasis about capacity building, education, awareness raising, partnering, collaborating, communicating, invest in breed improvement. That's a very specific one. I guess that's to a pandemic resistant breed, collaborative partners, communication. What are we seeing? Anything else? So these are like generalism cases, support programs, more research, improved regulations, advocacy, advocacy. Regulations, myosecurity. So yes. So we see a lot of capacity building, communications, advocacy, some very specific things around extension services. Yeah. There's a large, a very diverse set of activities here. So high that people will do aggressive steps. So thank you very much. I think that's good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you everyone for all your contributions in the chat. Thank you so much. So I think at this point, let me hand you over to Bonnie to take us through to the next session. Thank you. Thank you so much. Say hi, Peter. And thanks everyone for your contributions in the groups. We are now slowly coming to the concluding remarks. At this point, we have two presentation or two speakers. I would like to invite, to start this session, Dr. Simplis Nuala, who is the head of the Agriculture and Food Security at the Africa Union Commission, Department for Rural Economy and Agriculture, to provide some concluding remarks. Over to you, Dr. Nuala. Thank you very much, Bonnie. Let me try to see whether my video can be up. Thank you very much. And let me take this opportunity to first thank all the participants today's regional Africa one meeting. I think looking from the chat and from the discussion yesterday, it has been an exciting meeting. I think nobody will doubt that within the two days that we spent together, we try as much as possible to assess the impact of the COVID-19 on the forced sustainability areas of livestock. More importantly, we also look at the past pandemic interventions that would start in not only the livestock sector, but in all the food systems on the continent. I think we had very interesting debate yesterday on how we move forward. And the main message that I picked from these two days is that we should remove the talk. It's time to act and it's time to act fast. Because if we have done it years before, certainly we will have an impact of the COVID-19 on the livestock sector or the food system on the continent, but this will have been not as huge as it is now. So we need to act and we need to act fast. And for this to happen, we call upon the government, the political leader to invest more in agriculture and invest more in livestock. The second message that I pick from this discussion is that one can do it alone. We need to work together. The right to partner, to collaborate, to discuss with all the stakeholder group has come as a key message from this meeting. I think it takes an important message to the guys and I'm sure when the chair takes the floor, you certainly alluded to that. It is a key message and I think not only yesterday, the relevance of the Manitoba platform of the gas has been reiterated. So with this, I want to thank you again. Thank you for inviting the African man to share with you the political perspective of the post COVID-19 intervention in agriculture. And thank you. Thank you again and see you during the global meetings. Thank you. Thank you so much, Simplis. It is now my pleasure to invite Rich Schneider, who is the chair for the Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, to provide his short closing remarks over Fritz. IT, please. Sorry? Please proceed. You were not alluded. Thank you. Thank you. I'm very happy to make these final remarks. It's now the third regional meeting. We are closing today and there are many similarities, even though we talk about totally different regions. We had a meeting in Oceania, that means New Zealand, Australia. Mainly, we had a meeting in North America, now Africa one. At the onset of the meeting, we heard from Day Harvey that due to the pandemic, an additional 130 million people will fall into the status of food insecurity. That is really very serious and consumption of animal-sourced foods in certain parts of Africa has fallen by more than one third, which is really also quite serious. But the meeting showed that we really have many options and many possibilities and chances to improve. For me, one important element is that we have to work harder also in the academia research cluster to really now make use of the one health approaches to control pathogens at their animal source. Even though the pandemic does not come directly from livestock, this is definitely something we have to discuss. And we also heard as a chance that in some parts of Africa, young people go back to rural areas and take up agriculture again. This could actually improve production consumption, more livestock and improved efficiency. And in this case, of course, young people are normally interested in technology and we have to make sure this technology is possible for them to be assessed. When we look at the value chains, we see and we have heard many times that sometimes in a value chain, only one link is weak and broke down and that affected the entire value chain. So we really have to make sure that we analyze these value chains and improve the weakest links as quickly as possible. We also have to make sure that we do research which is relevant to our livestock sector and make sure that the results are reaching the users as quickly as possible. But we also have heard many times that it's important to focus on people and people are behind all the livestock production, producing high value food for everybody. And we have to make sure that we leave no one behind. And to do this, we need investments. We have a good chance to develop examples of excellence in the livestock sector and then make sure that these examples are being used in other parts of Africa or the world to improve the sustainability and also the resilience of the livestock sector in the near future. With this, I would like to thank again the organizers for this excellent meeting. And I also would like to mention that the Global Agenda is open for new members you are welcome to approach our Agenda support team. Eduardo Arcadias is online and you will find the webpage in the poster which is posted in the share fair. And we are looking forward to see you all in the Global Meeting which will start 14 September and will end 18 September. With this, thank you again to participate, highly appreciate it, keep on the good work and keep healthy. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much Fritz for those remarks. At this juncture I would like to introduce Shirley Tarawalin who is the Assistant Director General at the International Livestock Research Institute responsible for institutional planning and partnerships to give us the final comments and close the meeting. Over Shirley. Thank you very much Bonnie and good afternoon. I think everybody's reached the afternoon in this meeting now. So it is good afternoon to all. Thank you so much for spending this time with us over this past couple of days, the three sessions that we've engaged in. As we've explored what does this actually mean for this part of the continent of Africa? What can we learn with regard to building back better after the COVID and what's the role of sustainable livestock in that context? I would like in particular to thank the organizing committee. Michael Victor and myself have co-chaired the committee and you've heard from I think all of the committee perhaps not Bernard during the course of the meeting. Bernard Kimorro, Cynthia Mugo, Martin Barrasa, Michael Victor, as I say co-chair this with me, Mohamed Abubakar, Robin Mbaye and Simplice Nuala. Thank you all so much. It was a really fantastic experience to work together on this and to learn from your experience as we put together the meeting. I'm really struck how much we've been able to cover in just what is really a few hours if you add it together. It's no more than a day's meeting actually I think and how we've connected and engaged throughout that and for that reason I must also take this opportunity to thank our IT support, Vincent and Edwin who've been making sure that all the technology supported us and they've changed from people's photographs to slides and played the music etc etc and our great communications teams. Peter Valentine, Isabel Boltonwick, who's not strictly speaking, a member of the comms team, Mireille Ferrari, Sehai Gashau, Mui Hakki, Muthoni and the other people who've moderated Bonnie herself who has done a fantastic job of shepherding us through the whole meeting. Those who've been blogging, those who've been doing some social media during and after the meeting to make sure that those who couldn't join in person have been able to participate in one way or another. I also want to thank every presenter, every panelist, every participant and everyone who has contributed towards the plans that have emerged. Our team will be working to put these together so that they can be presented from this region to the global meeting that as Fritz has mentioned will be coming up shortly. I think we need to see this as the beginning of a conversation and it's a really important conversation as we've heard. Not just for the livestock sector but for development more broadly because if sustainable livestock can really play its role in development then it will contribute to future sustainable and resilient food systems. I think this meeting has also emphasised the diversity. Different stakeholders coming from different perspectives but harnessing that diversity to rethink a way forward is both a challenge and an opportunity that I think is really worthwhile grasping. So let me just close after those many thanks and really meaning all of them and Fritz thank you so much for saying with us this was the fourth or third or so of the meetings that you have that you have gone through your halfway. There's some good news. So let me close. Vincent, please go back to the previous slide. Yeah, that's one. The reminder, the global event, you can see the link there. All the meeting outputs, the recordings, presentations, blog posts and the report that we'll be putting together will be available on the website for the global agenda. That's also the place that Fritz mentioned if you're interested in joining that you can go to and there's also a couple of links there for anybody who's interested in being part of a D group where we talk about things to do with sustainable livestock and even some resources online there as well. So with that let me thank everybody and very much look forward to seeing every one of you and your friends as you come to the global meeting in about 10 days, two weeks time. Thank you so much everyone. Good evening. Goodbye.