Poster prepared by Kanar Hamza (NIIA) and Sirak Bahta (ILRI) for the Agrifood chain toolkit conference: Livestock and fish value chains in East Africa, Kampala, 9-11 September 2013.

1. Smallholder market compe//veness for beef produc/on
in Botswana: A quan/ta/ve value chain analysis
Kanar Hamza and Sirak Bahta: Norwegian Ins/tute of Interna/onal Affairs; Interna/onal Livestock research ins/tute.
Smallholder CaHle Producers In Botswana
• Ca$le provide draught power, meat, milk, as
well as new ca$le through reproduc8on.
• Ca$le can be easily converted to cash when
needed.
About 3% of Botswana’s GDP is based on
ca$le exports, and ca$le accounts for most
of the agricultural share of GDP.
• Ca$le also provide significant contribu8ons
in terms of providing employment
opportuni8es for rural households in
Botswana, especially in communal lands
were ca$le produc8on is the main source of
income (Mahabile et al. 2005).
Livestock and Fish agrifood chain toolkit conference Kampala 9‐11 September, 2013
Key points
• We constructed a system dynamics (SD)
model of the Botswana beef sector.
• We used the constructed value chain model to
run different scenarios: (1) baseline (business‐
as‐usual), (2) a scenario with FMD disease
outbreaks (limi8ng trading capability), (3)
changing management prac8ce (i.e. moving
from oxen to weaners), and (4) market
diversifica8on scenarios.
Market opportuni/es and challenges
• Botswana is already one of Africa’s
largest beef exporters.
• However, Botswana’s share in large
beef impor8ng country markets is
rela8vely small compared to major
players like Brazil and Australia and
growing beef exporters like India.
• Even if Botswana doubled or tripled its
beef produc8on, it will s8ll remain a
small player rela8ve to large producers
such as Brazil.
• Therefore, the focus of Botswana
should be towards improving quali8es
and targe8ng high quality end markets
in impor8ng countries rather than
compe8ng on cost and volume with
the world’s largest and more efficient
beef exporters.
• At the same 8me, Botswana needs to
focus on the diversifica8on of its
export market channel to include Halal
markets in the Middle East, growing
local demand for beef, high quality
interna8onal markets, and nearby sub
Saharan countries to become more
resilient and less vulnerable to
changing in trade structure in different
markets.
Simplified Structure of the Model
Scenario 4 Scenario 2 (S 3 has minor differences) Scenario 1