A feasibility study will test how rapid-response finance could protect livestock, trade and livelihoods when a transboundary disease emergency hits.

Africa is exploring whether animal-disease emergency response should have a standing financial mechanism behind it, rather than relying only on funding assembled after an outbreak has already disrupted livestock systems. The World Organisation for Animal Health and the African Union Interafrican Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR) have opened procurement for a feasibility study on a proposed continental emergency fund for transboundary animal diseases.

The proposal is not a fund launch. The two institutions are seeking analysis of whether and how a standing, ring-fenced and replenishable facility could be established to support rapid action when disease emergencies threaten livestock, livelihoods and trade. That distinction is commercially important: the work is about designing an instrument, testing its governance and financing, and identifying the conditions under which it could operate, not committing capital today.

The study will examine the emergency-financing gap for priority animal diseases and its effects on trade and investment. It is also asked to benchmark contingency, pooled, revolving, insurance, guarantee and blended-finance approaches, while consulting member states, regional economic communities, development partners, finance institutions, insurers and the private sector. The resulting comparison must set out at least three feasible institutional, legal, operational and financial options, including capitalisation and replenishment scenarios.

Initial coverage would consider the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Economic Community of West African States and the East African Community, with potential later expansion. The work is linked to AU-IBAR's Integrated Regional Livestock Value Chains programme, giving the study a direct connection to markets whose resilience can be affected by disease-related movement controls, production losses and delayed response capacity.

The selected assignment is expected to run for about 12 weeks from contract signature, with a final feasibility study, financing strategy, implementation roadmap and outline fund charter among the planned deliverables. Its eventual economic value will depend on choices still to be made: how the facility is capitalised, who activates it, which risks are covered and whether safeguards enable funds to move quickly enough in a real emergency.