25. One of the main reasons for the declining performance of veterinary services in SSA during the 1960s and 1970s was the rapid increase in personnel costs at the expense of nonsalary recurrent funding (Anteneh, 1983, 1985: de Haan and Nissen, 1985). From 1960 to 1976, veterinary service personnel costs in West Africa increased at an average rate of 7% per year, whereas nonstaff recurrent expenditure increased by only 3% per year. As a result, the salary:nonsalary ratio, one of the predominant indicators of the efficiency of a livestock service, dropped from 64:36 in 1960 to 75:25 in 1976 in West Africa, and from an excellent 40:60 in 1974 to a poor 70:30 in 1981 in Kenya. In contrast, in Southern Africa the ratio remained close to the 50:50 optimum over the same period.
26. In 1984, some countries in SSA began introducing institutional reforms to address this problem. The primary purpose of these reform programs has been to stabilize or reduce staff in government services, to establish LDFs, and to increase direct government contributions to complement nonsalary operating funds. The effect of these programs has been assessed by comparing staffing and budget data from 20 countries (of which 8 had started to implement institutional reform programs during 1985-1989) with data on the same countries in earlier studies.
27. The results of this study indicate that, while the growth of the staff numbers in some countries have levelled off, they have in aggregate continued to grow over the past decade. The total number of livestock service staff in the 20 countries surveyed jumped from just over 13,000 staff in the mid-1970s to more than 25,000 in the second half of the 1980s. As a result, the average number of Veterinary Livestock Units (VLUs) per veterinarian has declined from almost 100,000 in the mid-1970s to just over 50,000 today, and the number of VLUs per middle- and lower-level veterinary assistant has dropped from 10,000 in the mid-1970s to about 7,000 now (Table 2). Overall growth has been the same in the different regions, although in West Africa growth has been particularly strong in the professional category, whereas in Eastern and Southern Africa staff growth has occurred mainly in the support category.
Table 2. Government Professional and Support Staff Ratios (VLU per staff) in the Different SSA Regions
|
Region
|
000 VLUs per Person |
|||
|
Professional Staff |
Support Staff |
|||
|
Mid-1970s |
Mid-1980s |
Mid-70s |
Mid-'80s |
|
|
Western Africa |
95 |
30 |
7 |
4 |
|
Eastern & Southern Africa |
120 |
80 |
14 |
6 |
Source: de Haan and Bekure (1991).
28. Some of the key conclusions regarding staffing are that:
(i) the average staff level exceeds recommended norms (200,000 VLUs per professional staff and 12,000 per support staff) for disease prevention in extensive production systems.(ii) the overall professional/support staff ratio exceeds, especially in West Africa, the generally accepted standards of about 1:20 for extensive systems and 1:10 for intensive systems.
(iii) substantial differences persist between countries, ranging from 300,000 VLU per professional staff in Ethiopia and Somalia to 20,000 VLU in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal: the number of VLUs per support staff varies from a high of 13,000 to a low of 900.
(iv) the state of a country's economy (measured by the level of per capita income) seems to be an important determinant of the amount of staff resources allocated to the sector; countries with a per capita GDP of more than US$ 800 had denser coverage in professional and support staff than the countries below the US$ 800 per capita income level.
29. Some of the key trends regarding the budgets of 16 livestock services for which data were available are:
(i) the recurrent financial budget of these services grew at about the same rate as the staff numbers. The growth was relatively strong in West Africa, but was less pronounced in East and Southern Africa, although differences in exchange rate adjustments over this period might have affected these changes. Budget increases generally fell below inflation rates.(ii) differences between individual countries are significant, however, budgets of the livestock services in the wealthier countries (per capita GOP of more than US$ 800), increased by an average of 16 percent, compared with only 1 percent in the poorer countries.
(iii) as a result of these tendencies, the salary/nonsalary budget ratio remained about the same, although again it varied greatly from one country to another. In West Africa, of the ten countries for which complete data were available, three countries improved, but four remained in the very poor 85:15 ratio range, where it becomes practically impossible to provide effective service. In Eastern and Southern Africa the average ratio worsened somewhat but is still satisfactory. However, this average is mainly based on the good budget allocations of Zimbabwe and Kenya and does not include some of the countries with less favorable budget allocations.
30. The erosion of the purchasing power of the individual salaries of the staff and the decline in their nonsalary operating funds in many countries continue to lead to poorly motivated staff and inadequate resources to satisfy sharply increased demands. Thus there is still a need for reforms and for the government to disengage from some of its tasks. Since countries vary greatly also in this regard, it is important to prepare institutional and public expenditure analyses and reorganization plans on an individual country basis, as already recommended earlier (de Haan and Nissen, 1985).
