Emerging peri-urban and urban animal production in the Western Highlands of Cameroon: The search for novel strategies for improving sustainability and productivity

Abstract

The Western Highlands of Cameroon (WHC) is considered to be the breadbasket of Cameroon and has a typically agrarian economy. This review highlights problems facing animal production, particularly those supported on pasture in the WHC. These problems have been complicated by challenges posed by the recent socio-political conflict in the Northwest region of Cameroon. Among these challenges is the rustling for cattle, sheep and goats and the endemic insecurity for gazetted rangelands within the region. Potential solutions are proposed for improving the sustainability and productivity of the emerging peri-urban and urban animal production system which is now a prominent niche production system. This review also underlines the need for suitable candidate animal species (e.g. cavies, cricetoma, snails, quails, guinea fowls, ducks, grasscutters, geese, local chickens and rabbits) with characteristics that are suitable for their integration into this niche production system. In the conduct of this review, 32 scientific publications with research outputs that propose solutions to constraints limiting the productivity of these candidate animal species for integration into the peri-urban and urban production systems were summarised. These papers comprised research on cavies (14), cricetoma (1), African giant land snail (5), Japanese quails (2) and crossed dairy cattle (4); there is also a survey of six studies on the utilisation of cheap and abundant feeding resources and feed transformation techniques for improvement of nutrient value or reduction of anti-nutrient factors in the WHC. The future of research for animal production in the WHC lies in the ability of knowledge brokers to communicate these research results to farmers to facilitate their implementation. This approach could ensure sustainability and productivity of the emerging peri-urban and urban animal production systems in the WHC.