Ethiopia and Somalia Sign Bilateral Cross-border MoU to Enhance Disease Control, Livestock Trade

28 March 2019, Addis Ababa, (Ethiopia): IGAD Center for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD) with financial support from USAID organized a bilateral two days meeting between Ethiopia and Somalia technical teams in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 26-27^th March, 2019 to develop an implementation framework to operationalize the Memorandum of Understanding on cross-border cooperation and coordination on animal health and sanitary measures.

This was followed by a one-day meeting of Ministers responsible for animal resources in the two countries on 28^th March, 2019 who signed the MoU that will strengthen the two countries’ cooperation and collaboration along their common border to address animal health issues including disease surveillance, disease control and timely sharing of animal health and trade information Participants included Ministers, protocol officers, Somalia ambassador to Ethiopia, Veterinary technical staff from national and regional/ state governments, FAO, ICPALD and community leader.

 H.E Mr. Umer Hussien, the Minister of Agriculture, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, opened the Ministerial meeting. He emphasized the need for Ethiopia and Somalia to work together in a harmonized approach in terms information sharing, disease prevention and control, livestock movement control, vaccination, disease surveillance, among others for the benefit of each country. This will mitigate animal disease outbreaks, ensure continued crossborder and international trade in livestock especially with Middle East countries. This will contribute to improved income to the crossborder communities and the two countries in general.

Remarks were also made by H.E Hussein Mohamud Sheikh Hussein, the Minister of Livestock, Forestry and Range, the Federal Democratic Republic of Somalia and Dr. Ameha Sebsibe on behalf of ICPALD Director.   

 The two meetings achieved the following:

• The first meeting of technical staff drafted an implementation framework to operationalize the MOU and established a governance structures
• The two Ministers signed the cross border MoU.

The ministerial meeting committed to:

• Advocate and maintain political will at the highest level of our two countries in support of the Memorandum of Understanding and the draft Implementation Framework aimed at operationalizing the MOU
• Mobilize required resources from within our respective countries, together with IGAD and from the Donor community to fund various activities in the MoU areas of cooperation and the draft implementation framework (IF)

Source: IGAD Website