Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease of great public health and economic importance transmitted by mosquitoes. The main method of preventing the disease is vaccination of susceptible livestock before outbreaks occur. Studies on RVF vaccines have focused on the production processes, safety, and efficacy standards but those on uptake and adoption levels are rare. This study sought to understand the barriers faced by men and women farmers in the uptake of livestock vaccines to inform strategies for optimizing the use of vaccines against RVF in East Africa. The cross-sectional qualitative study utilized the pairwise ranking technique in sex disaggregated focus group discussions to identify and rank these barriers. Results indicate that men and women farmers experience barriers to vaccine uptake differentially. The barriers include the direct and indirect cost of vaccines, distances to vaccination points, availability of vaccination crushes, intra-household decision making processes and availability of information on vaccination campaigns. The study concludes that vaccine provision does not guarantee uptake at the community level. Hence, these barriers should be considered while designing vaccination strategies to enhance community uptake because vaccine uptake is a complex process which requires buy-in from men and women farmers, veterinary departments, county/district and national governments, and vaccine producers.

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This paper refers to 4 technologies involving cover crops and integrated crop-livestock interventions developed in West and Central Africa under varying social, ecological and production systems, in which farmers and researchers, working in partnership to combine indigenous knowledge and circumstances with research interventions, have contributed to the development of the final innovation. The 4 technologies are: improved Mucuna fallows; crop-livestock production in dry savannas; Stylosanthes as a feed and fallow crop; and green-manure cover-crop systems for smallholder farmers. For each innovation, a brief account is given of the technical-development history and the lessons that have been learned through the interaction of researchers and farmers, together, in some cases, with extension services. Experiences from these examples are pooled in the discussion to highlight the importance of partnerships in the development of agricultural interventions suitable for small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

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