Khartoum, Sudan Omer El Dirani is Northern Sudan’s walking, talking encyclopedia of livestock knowledge. Beginning at a young age, Omer saw livestock not only as animal husbandry but also a fascinating mix of culture, tribes, attitudes and ancient behaviors. His particular panoramic point of view and the fact that he has spent his working life hopping back and forth between the public and private sectors gives him a unique perspective on market information and the needs of the real producers and traders on the ground. For Omer, the main problems with traditional MIS are that 1) government programs never actually mirror the complexity of what is going on in the markets, and have never before collected or redistributed market information that would be interesting to producers and traders and 2) government programs are based on fictitious assumptions; assumptions about how many traders are working in livestock, assumptions about what they need, assumptions that simply bringing scales into the markets will make traders use them instead of their traditional pricing based on colors, sizes and origin, etc. Dirani admits that fixing such problems would be a massive undertaking, and may even be impossible due to all of the factors that made him fascinated by livestock markets to begin with. Perhaps there isn’t any new market information that would be useful to producers and traders of livestock because they already get their information from trusted sources that cut along tribal lines. But we can at least start by actually reflecting the varieties and origins of livestock for better price collection, and by simply asking what types of market information people on the ground may actually find useful so that we can then move forward based on real knowledge--no more assumptions.
