Livestock plays a key role in the different facet of societal life in Africa. It principally serves as source of animal protein in the diet of the populace as well as source of materials for body wears such as waist belt, shoes, blanket etc. Livestock also plays a key role in the religious life of certain sects as object for sacrifice and worship. The small ruminant constitutes a major category of the livestock that are kept by many household and it serves as source of income for the household as well as occasional source of food. In West Africa, many households takes the husbandry of small ruminant as source of livelihood, in some instances this could be the main commodity of the business and in other cases it co-exists with cropping to form a farming livelihood. Research efforts to improve the productivity of the small ruminant has attracted some attention in recent past with active contributions from specialized livestock research institute in Africa. The adoption, and use of the ensuing technologies is not widespread for issues of technology transfer, appropriateness of the technologies for the smallholders, the cost and other soft issues around access, communications etc. Thus, deriving the desired economic benefits from the sector is limited and its broad potentials to generate jobs for the youth, raw materials for the industry and contribution to nation economy is widely affected. This book attempt to analyses the small ruminant livestock production and marketing systems in Benin Republic, to identify the constraints, source solutions and explicate the innovation opportunities within the industry. The book explicated both the technological, institutional or infrastructural modification including market, policies, social interactions that could be manipulated to yield improved productivity and profitability. It further explored both qualitative and quantitative value chain analysis of gains from the adjustments of the interventions of different actors. This is expected to provide the needed knowledge material that could be used by the different actors around the small ruminant’s value chain actors to foster productivity and profitability.

Published as FARA Guide Book.