8.3 Bovine Tuberculosis in African Cattle Populations

Bovine tuberculosis is endemic in the African cattle population, and it is critical to examine the demographics of the most affected host. Africa is home today to approximately 300 million head of cattle, about 24% of the world’s cattle (Figs.

2005), and, by then, this was estimated to be almost double the cattle population on the continent in the 1950s (Lunde and Lindtj0rn 2013).

Fig. 8.2 Estimated cattle population in the African continent between 1800 and 2014. The graph was generated based on data from the ILRI and FAO (2005) and reports on rinderpest in Africa (AU 2010) population hind-casting from 1955 to 1800

East Africa has by far the largest cattle population on the continent, of which 50 million are found in Ethiopia (HarvestChoice 2015). The West and East African zebus are the most common cattle breeds in Africa and are mostly farmed with in the arid and semiarid regions, away from the humid, tsetse-infested, forested areas where only the tsetse-tolerant N’Damas survive (Deshler 1963). The Sanga and Afrikaner are present in Eastern and Southern Africa, respectively, while the Kuri, whose numbers are steadily declining, is the only known heat-tolerant breed and is farmed with around Lake Chad (Tawah et al. 1997). The variation in cattle density (Fig. 8.3) on the continent is influenced by many factors that shall not be explored in this chapter. It is important to note that the distribution of the different breeds in Africa is a reflection of the migration of its human population with their cattle and the introduction of new cattle breeds onto the continent (Deshler 1963).

8.4