This paper illustrates how weather derivatives indexed to forecasts of famine can be designed and used by operational agencies and donors to facilitate timely and reliable financing, for effective emergency response to climate-based, slow-onset disasters such as drought. We provide a general framework for derivative contracts, especially in the context of index insurance and famine catastrophe bond, and show how they can be used to complement existing tools and facilities in drought risk financing through a risk-layering strategy.

Presents and discusses ILCA's research on smallholder farming in the highlands, village sheep and goat production in the humid zone, cattle production in the subhumid zone, pastoral production in the arid zones of West Africa, range livestock production in eastern and southern Africa, and breed evaluation and herd modelling.

Describes the monitoring Programme carried out by ILCA covering phase II of the Kenya Livestock Development Project, and the six components included. Also describes a two-tiered monitoring system consisting of intensive studies of carefully selected samples and an extensive data collection network concentrating on key indicators. Discusses initial results from the Kenya monitoring Programme.

A training film made by Mojo for Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project, Marsabit, Kenya.

Insuring African livestock: Development of the world's first insurance for African pastoralist herders.

The aim of this thesis was to identify breeding objectives of smallholder and pastoral sheep keepers in Ethiopia (Afar, Bonga, Horro and Menz areas) and to design appropriate community-based breeding plans for genetic improvement of four indigenous sheep breeds. Information on genetics of adaptation in farm animals was reviewed. Two live animals ranking experiments approaches, own-flock and groupanimal ranking, were used to identify sheep breeding objectives. In own-flock ranking, owners paid more attention to production and reproduction performances and behavioral traits (e.g.