Pan-African programme for the Control of Epizootics Final report regional technical assistance 2003 - 2006.

The regional technical assistant (RTA) for the West African Sahelian countries nowcovers a cluster of 10 countries : Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Mali, BurkinaFaso and Niger. The Gambia was added to the list as from April 1st, 2004. Congo, DRCand Nigeria were added on November 1st, 2004. He was part of an initial team of threeregional technical assistants that covered West and Central Africa, except for Chad,where a national TA had been appointed.The RTA covers an area encompassing 7 million km2, a human population of almost 240million and an estimated 40 million heads of cattle and 130 million small ruminants. Theprimary development, geographic, demographic, economic and livestock relatedindicators are presented on the next page. Except for Guinea-Bissau (Portuguesespeaking), The Gambia and Nigeria (English-speaking), all countries are (officially)French - speaking.The RTA is based at the PACE Regional Coordination Unit in Sotuba (Bamako) in Malifrom where 438 days (chargeable nights) of country visits have been conducted(including in-country visits in Mali) between June 2003 and October 2006. The RTA'scontract was initiated on May 30th,2003 and ended on October 31st,2006 (41 man-months)Over this 41-months period, the RTAhas visited every of the ten countriesat least twice, most often four or fivetimes, with a maximum of eight (8).The executive summaries of themission reports are presented at theend of this final report and illustratethe variability of progress made inthese countries.