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Dr. Gbenga Ariyo
- August 6, 2026
How embedding commercial transactions in capacity building sold 10,000+ vaccine
doses — and built a market that outlives donor funding.
Livestock vaccine markets in many parts of Nigeria continue to suffer from weak demand,
fragmented distribution networks, and heavy dependence on donor-funded market
activation. While many development projects have invested significantly in farmer and service
provider training, these interventions often end once project funding ceases — because they
fail to create commercial incentives for private-sector actors to continue investing in market
development. From a Market Systems Development (MSD) perspective, sustainable change
occurs when market actors have both the incentive and the capacity to continue delivering
services without external support.
What is the Cost Recovery Model?
A cost recovery model is a sales and market-penetration strategy in which users of a product
or service pay fees that recover all or part of the costs of providing it — and where companies
incur no additional cost when expanding sales into new areas. The objective is not necessarily profit, but ensuring that operating, maintenance, and replacement costs are covered, making
the service financially sustainable.
Four Founding Principles
In practice: the VITAL 2 Project
In the first week of July, a market activation event in Yola, Adamawa State brought together
Community Animal Health Workers (CAHWs) and Veterinary Paraprofessionals (VPPs) under
GALVmed’s VITAL 2 Project. Commercial partners and their distributors were positioned as
core market actors — driving vaccine awareness, demonstrating product quality, building
customer relationships, and generating sales — rather than passive beneficiaries of donorfunded promotion.
Every vaccine sold was more than commercial success — it was proof that technical training
can simultaneously function as a demand-generation platform, a market linkage mechanism,
and a commercially viable distribution channel, strengthening trust between suppliers and
field actors while reducing dependence on subsidized distribution.
The crowding-in effect
The strongest indicator of systemic change: veterinary pharmaceutical companies with no
contractual obligation have voluntarily replicated the model in their own commercial
operations — proof it generates enough commercial value for market actors to invest their own
resources without donor direction.
