7. As livestock move from areas of production to centres of consumption over long distances, they change hands several times. The traders and intermediaries engaged in livestock marketing appear unnecessarily numerous- There is therefore a tendency for some governments to try to limit their numbers through licensing. However a number of studies - Abdalla (1974) in the Sudan; Mariam and Hillman (1975) in Ethiopia; Staatz (1979) in Ivory Coast; Ariza-Nino et al (1980) in West Africa: and Reusse (1982) in Somalia - have shown that these intermediaries and traders perform essential tasks, such as providing market information, concluding sales, guaranteeing credit transactions, and that the livestock marketing systems move animals through the market chain from producers to consumers with remarkable efficiency.
8. While licensing is required for taxation and other purposes, a policy of using this instrument to control the number of traders in the marketing system should be avoided. As Ansell (1971) observed for Botswana and Mariam and Hillman (1975) for Ethiopia, this tendency can introduce monopsonistic practices in the system. For example in 1968/69, Ghana denied trading licences to non-Ghanian livestock traders, and this had disastrous effects on the supply of meat to consumers.
