AFRICA NAZARENE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

TURKANA

LIVESTOCK SALES AND MONITORING SYSTEM

BY

JOHNSTONE E. LOWOTON
13M01ACS026

SUPERVISOR

MR. AMOS GICHAMBA

UNIT NAME: COMPUTER PROJECT 1

UNIT CODE: CSC 407

SEPTEMBER – NOVEMBER 2013

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in
Computer Science.

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Table of Contents
Terminologies..............................................................................................................................................2
CHAPTER 1................................................................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................4
BACKGROUND INFORMATION.........................................................................................................5
PROBLEM STATEMENT......................................................................................................................5
PURPOSE STATEMENT........................................................................................................................6
OBJECTIVES.........................................................................................................................................6
PROJECT QUESTION...........................................................................................................................7
SCOPE OF THE PROJECT....................................................................................................................8
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT.....................................................................................................8
ASSUMPTIONS.....................................................................................................................................9
CHAPTER TWO.......................................................................................................................................10
LITERATURE REVIEW..........................................................................................................................10
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................10
Global perspective.................................................................................................................................11
Regional perspective..............................................................................................................................12
Local perspective...................................................................................................................................12
What to incorporate to the proposed system..........................................................................................12
Shortcoming in the reviewed system.....................................................................................................13
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................13
CHAPTER THREE...................................................................................................................................15
METHODOLOGY....................................................................................................................................15
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................15
The locality of the project......................................................................................................................15
Beneficiary to the project.......................................................................................................................15
Sample (Target Group)..........................................................................................................................16
Sampling method...................................................................................................................................16
Data collection methods........................................................................................................................16
Semi structured interview......................................................................................................................16
Questionnaires.......................................................................................................................................17
Secondary data collection......................................................................................................................19
Internet sources......................................................................................................................................19

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 Data analysis methods...........................................................................................................................19
System analysis and design method.......................................................................................................19
Coding and programming languages.....................................................................................................19
System test approach.............................................................................................................................20
References.................................................................................................................................................21

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Terminologies
ITDG – Intermediate Technology Development Group

ICT – Information and Communication Technology

NZ – New Zealand

NAIT – National Animal Identification and Tracing

FFID – Frequency formulation identification

LITS – livestock identification and trace-Back system

FSNAU – food security and National analysis unit

NSIS – National Security Intelligence Service

EA – East Africa

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
The study of the research project was carried out in Turkana County which has the total area of

71,597.8 km2 with a population of about 1.4 million and research carried out also in its

counterpart neighboring community that is west Pokot, and its main aim was to undertake a

comprehensive study on livestock/cattle identification, traceability and tracking as a mechanism

for preventing livestock raiding/theft related violent conflicts among pastoralist communities in

Northern part of Kenya. The study seeks to investigate and consolidate the place of livestock

identification, including branding in preventing, combating and eradicating cattle rustling. The

findings of the study will also play a critical role in improving the rate of detection and recovery

of stolen animals in the region.

Livestock sales and monitoring system is a proposed web based system to manage the activities

related to the sales of livestock and monitoring of legal ownership of livestock as far as the

security of livestock is concerned in the northern parts of Kenya. According to the local

government authority of Turkana and (ITDG 2005), the development and sustainability of

livestock markets and marketing activities have been a major challenge in the county as whole

due to some of the stolen livestock being brought to the market place and no specific information

about the livestock is captured by the officer in charge of marketing in the market access areas

thus encouraging cattle rustling within the communities practicing pastoralism hence a customer

might buy the stolen livestock.

And so to take the advantage of the advancement of technology, the county government

authority of Turkana requires the web based system that is supposed to capture the records

related to the livestock ownership, the market area where the selling and buying of livestock

takes place for the sake of proper identification of livestock sold and inclusive of the

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photographs of the customer buying the livestock and the seller and also the livestock itself as

far as the security assurance is concerned to minimize risks to biosecurity.

The system would keep updated data concerning livestock selling and keep the records for the

customers and sellers to the database and also in respect to who served them while entering the

records to the system for accurate retrieval and to facilitate simple financial statements and

reports and the system should provide the framework for all forms of spatial data storage, data

retrieval, analysis, display of the reports and modeling.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The system will be used by the Turkana county local government authority to effectively manage

the illegal transaction of livestock in various marketing centers and generation of revenue in the

county levels. The system user would be able to enter the full details of the livestock seller and

buyer and the kind of livestock involved in the transaction, and the system to automatically

generate the acknowledgement slip to be issued to the buyer showing both the buyers and sellers

report and also capturing the details of the user of the system. The system will help achieve

vision 2030 in the livestock sector. the system will be able to capture the buyers and sellers

details like, date of birth, place of birth, county of residence, National identification number or

any other official legal document, snap short, full names as in national ID card, livestock

transaction date, and capturing the details of one of the relatives as per the national identity card

and the system to automatically generate the age as per the system date. And the goal of the use

of the technological infrastructure (ICT) is to reduce the raids that involve the stolen livestock

being sold to the other part of the region bordering that community land example Pokot and

Turkana counties.

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PROBLEM STATEMENT
Most of the pastoralists have experienced lately attacks at northern part of Kenya that led to more

than three thousand livestock stolen from the Samburu community, the attack that was

experienced at Baragoi which left fourty Police men dead. And for that reason cattle rustlers have

been investigated to involve themselves in the livestock business of either exchange of livestock

or even selling and buying of new stolen livestock from other different regions. The livestock

stolen are not recovered because of lack of the correct compurized security measures to monitor

the people involved in that kind of trade and to capture their full details most importantly the

national identification data and the county of residence and their facial appearance for follow up

and tracing later in-case of livestock sold is claimed to be stolen. Retrieval of accurate report of

required livestock transaction details for further investigation if need be.

PURPOSE STATEMENT
The main purpose of this study is to come up with the computerized system – Livestock sales

and monitoring systems that will help in accurately monitoring the livestock sold to the buyers

by the sellers to establish if they are genuine or stolen livestock and also help the local

government authority to generate some revenue. And this would enable the person interested in

livestock transaction, to have it in genuine manner and to ensure peaceful control of the cattle

rustling experienced in the northern part of the country. Moreover, the livestock business people

would be able to register their details before they get to the sale yard faster and easily.

OBJECTIVES
After the completion of the system development, system testing and implementation is done, the

system would be able to:-

 Register the specific buyers and sellers involved in the livestock transaction.

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  Confirming the legitimacy of livestock involved in the transaction through the double

checking the owner’s National identification details.

 Generate the livestock sales summary report which includes the date of the transaction

and in all parties involved.

 Capture the details of the system user serving in the livestock sale yard and to provide

easy access to information with strong integrity constraints.

 To generate the simple financial statements at the end of the month to determine the loss

and gain in terms of revenue by the local government authority.

 Show the history of the livestock transaction in question and past transaction details.

PROJECT QUESTION
To understand the proposed system, it is important to ask several questions concerning the

project.

 Will the computerized livestock sales and monitoring system be able to register specific

details of the people involved in livestock transaction?

 How the computerized livestock sales and monitoring system be able to confirm the

legitimacy of livestock involved in the livestock transaction by checking the national

identification information of the buyer and seller?

 How the format of the livestock transaction summary report generated should appear

after transaction and inputting full information required into the system?

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  Will the system capture the full information of the person handling the system when

serving the people involved in the business transaction as stated in the national

identification document?

 What is the format and content of the financial report expected from the system by the

systems users and after what duration will the system generate the simple financial

transaction statements?

 How the system will be able to retrieve the historical transaction of the livestock in

question through the use of national identification card details?

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The proposed project will be able to register the specific details of the people involved in the

livestock transactions as specified in their national identification cards. The system users will be

able to view or retrieve the historical report of the livestock transaction in question through

keying in the national identification details of the parties. The systems will also be used by the

local government authority to generate financial statements at the end of every month to

determine revenue collected by the local government if it is running at a loss. The proposed

system will generate the automatic summary report after the livestock business hours accurately

as expected after querying in full information into the system that is required.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT

The use of the proposed livestock sales and monitoring systems will help reduce the raids

associated with the cattle rustling in northern part of Kenya. The system would be used to

officially register the sellers and buyers involved in livestock transaction. This will mean that

there will be no selling of stolen livestock as a result of the cattle rustling by pastoralists as the

process of selling and buying of livestock would be based on the computerized system.

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The proposed system would be able to retrieve the all the stored historical details of the livestock

transaction in question through the national identification details of the people involved in the

livestock transaction, such as the historical sellers of the livestock, records of the all the livestock

buyers and the financial report associated with the livestock selling during the sale of that month

to determine the revenue collected by the local government authority.

The proposed system will ensure that the details and information associated with the sale of

livestock is completely secured and have a backup in-case of system failure. The system will be

accessed and monitored by the authorized personnel for example, database manager and system

administrator and system user at the livestock marketing access area.

ASSUMPTIONS
The assumption of the proposed livestock sales and monitoring system is that:-

 The county government should be able to purchase computers and other devices like

mobile phones to be used when implementing the system.

 All users and personnel should be having basic computer skills and updated with current

technology advancement.

 The users and personnel in the county government authority using the system should be

sure of having power ability to charge the computer systems and mobile devices used to

administer the sale of livestock.

 The buying and selling of livestock happens within the network coverage area and the

users of the systems to have access to an internet enabled computers and mobile phone

devices.

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 The system will have a simple interface and easy to understand by the users and also can

be maintained easily by the system users by the help of the system user documentations.

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 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction
The process of livestock selling and genuine ownership of livestock in Turkana county has been

a major issue and not only Turkana region but also the neibouring counties too like West Pokot,

Samburu county. There has been a lot of effort placed by the government to initiate peace

following the experienced cattle raiding lately at Samburu region that has led hundreds of

people misplaced and other rendered homeless due to theft of livestock and the policies that the

government introduced did not helped due to lack of good control and monitoring skills of

animals or livestock stolen by the cattle rustlers and therefore international non-governmental

organization coming in to help in initializing peace and distributing food to the people affected.

The sale of livestock especially in Turkana county is a process that has always been done

manually without ensuring the security of livestock and the original owner and leading to my

conclusions there is not a monitoring and sales system that has been developed to manage this

process of livestock transaction in the market access areas to avoid the increasing of livestock

theft in the northern region of Kenya.

The portion of the literature review document seeks to look at the same and similar developed

systems that have been in existence and developed by other software developers individual or

organizations. Desirably, the previous systems should outline recommendations and highlight

key areas in the sales and monitoring of livestock transaction process and movement too.

This literature review will provide a view of the envisioned computerized livestock sales and

monitoring systems within the Turkana county and the neighboring counties that experience

cattle rustling.

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Global perspective
One of the global livestock monitoring system is NZ livestock traceability, the NAIT in the New

Zealand. It’s a system that would identify and track each cattle beast and deer from three months

of age, or earlier, until slaughter. Farms, sale yards and processing plants would all be registered

with animals’ FFID tags scanned each time they arrived or left a particular site. The data would

be provided to a national database by those who manage or process livestock. (SCAN, issue no.

25, September 2008)

Another similar monitoring system is the one owned by Botswana’s livestock identification and

trace-Back system (LITS). LITS system forms a very effective tool taking advantage of

advanced technology where by the government has enacted legislation that requires that all cattle

must be electronically identified before being slaughtered or sold to any other party. This has

greatly eliminated commercialization of cattle rustling in Botswana.

Mr. Kedikilwe, the LITS project coordinator said "initially, farmers could fight over the

ownership of stolen and recovered cattle. But with the introduction of digital ID for cattle, the

Police with the help of Field Extension officers have recovered thousands of stolen livestock and

identified their rightful owners. Incidences where two farmers dispute the ownership of a cow

only for the Police to find out that none of them is the real owner of the cow have also

abounded .( Practical Action-EA Peace Bulletin - September 2004)

The systems mentioned above has the both the following features: it helps police and the owners

of the missing or stolen livestock each day; it helps in loss and theft updating by the help of

livestock secured database system and in case of disputed livestock immediately the report is

availed to the police nationally.

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Regional perspective
The regional literature review checks at systems which resemble the proposed computerized

livestock and monitoring system, and some countries in Africa continent have already

implemented it for example Botswana government that implemented Livestock Identification

and Trace-Back System (LITS) project.

Regionally, we have FSNAU organization web in Somali region being administered in Nairobi

village market in Kenya within East Africa region which assist in monitoring of livestock sector

and its impact on livestock and food security. Pastoralist seasonal migration is monitored along

with the climatic situation (which usually determines where pastoralists will go to graze their

livestock). (FSNAU Post GU 2013 Food Security and Nutrition Technical Report - Somali,

October 18, 2013) Food security and nutrition analysis unit.

Local perspective
In Kenya especially Turkana County, the sale of livestock is administered by the local

government authority in the county level and livestock security monitoring with the help of

Kenya defense forces at the specific county borders to guard the livestock conflict that might

arise within the bordering communities for example West Pokot and Turkana County at Marich

by pass. And also the livestock security is being provided also by the Kenya police reserve

within the people in the community.

What to incorporate to the proposed system

NAIS, NZ livestock traceability system which has good implementable features and have

incorporated important module such as identifying and tracking of each and every livestock

involved in the buying and selling of livestock at the sale yard. A feature that can help the

proposed system enter details of the livestock owner and the livestock sold. And also involving a

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module for farms, sale yards and meat processing plants would all be registered with animals

with the specific tattoos and tags scanned each time they arrived or left a particular site.

Botswana’s livestock identification and trace-Back system (LITS) performs real electronically

animal identification before sold to any other party involved and this will help the proposed

system update its database whenever there is transfer of genuine livestock ownership to a new

buyer.

Another feature to be borrowed is introduction of Digital ID for cattle, of which the police with

the help of field sale yards officers at the livestock market access areas, would be able to identify

the stolen livestock and their rightful owners.

Also what to incorporate from the FSNAU organization web in Somalia into the proposed

livestock sales and monitoring system is ensuring pastoralist seasonal migration is monitored

along with the climatic situation which determines where pastoralists will go to graze their

livestock.

Shortcoming in the reviewed system

One major shortcoming in all the reviewed system is that they don’t acknowledge the

advancement of the mobile technology which has a feature that can enable the system users to be

served efficiently and for the people involved in the livestock trade to monitor the progress of the

livestock trade and increase and decrease of livestock market price.

Conclusion
Livestock sales and monitoring system is in collaboration with the local county government

authority and the national police intelligence that helps in following up of the disputed livestock

that has been reported to them missing be it from raid or stolen. System would ensure online

alerting nationwide in-case of reported missing livestock and the investigation to be carried out

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by the help of the extraction of the livestock transaction history report in every livestock market

access centers to capture the details of the parties involved in the identified missing livestock as

claimed by the genuine party.

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 CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

Introduction
This chapter will discuss the approach and explain the methodology used to arrive at the

completion of the proposed project and to ensure its working properly as the developer expected.

The coding techniques and tools used to achieve the users requirements and the programming

tools used in the development of the system which involves the use of fact finding methods such

as data collections, systems analysis and design tools and software development process.

The locality of the project

The proposed livestock sales and monitoring systems will be based in the local County

government authority and other stakeholders involved like NSIS center, Kenya meat commission

and other legal government enforcement agencies that keeps law and order to enhance security of

livestock in the community involved in the cattle rustling to eliminate livestock theft, for

example in Turkana county and Samburu county where cattle rusting is being experience on

daily basis and to be specific the target area is Lodwar sale yard market access center in Turkana

county and Chepareria sale yard in West Pokot county and each center having system

administrator to who is only authorized to access the system and to monitor the livestock

transaction on daily basis.

Beneficiary to the project

The beneficiaries of the proposed system will be the pastoralists, national police security

agencies and local government authority. Therefore, the system is designed to help the county

government generate revenue, Kenya meat commission receiving the cattle to be slaughtered and

processed so as to confirm the genuine ownership of the cattle, for the government security

agencies to reduce the cattle rustling that is experienced among the pastoralist communities.

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Sample (Target Group)
The proposed location for the study is various counties within Kenya especially in Turkana and

West Pokot County targeting the pastoralists and livestock traders. And I would take the sample

of one to three pastoralists and some three Police officers. The size of the sample target group

will represent the features of the whole pastoralist group of people in Kenya, where by the

suggested sample is economical and manageable and as well as faster in getting response

concerning the information required form the target group. The sample target group selected will

be manageable in terms of acquiring comprehensive information with full accuracy.

Sampling method
The research study will be carried out using the random sampling method to acquire relevant

information from the pastoralists and the national security officers involved in livestock security.

The random sampling method will be used to find out from the pastoralists and livestock traders

what are their thoughts concerning the proposed livestock sales and monitoring system.

Data collection methods

The main data collection technique used in this research study is semi structured interviews, and

where possible observation method is used and questionnaires.

Semi structured interview

The proposed system project is comprised of semi-structured interviews with the some of the

pastoralists in the Turkana region and west Pokot region and also some national security officers

(Kenya defense force), and the Governors both for Turkana and West Pokot county included.

The findings from the Turkana Pastoralist community members discovered are, a young group of

men who are prone to cattle rustling are said to raid the neighboring community and to steal

cattle and kill people who try to deny them the opportunity of getting those cattle by force and

after getting those cattle they drive them to a very secure and hidden place where they will plan

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what they would do with the cattle and it was discovered that they happen to contact the various

people who are major livestock traders and sell to them at a cheaper price and others also sell

them to the neighboring country like Uganda and others sell the cattle to the different counties

and this happens after they escape the following up security officers. And we discovered that the

Turkana cattle and West Pokot community cattle are different in such a way that the marks place

on the cattle inform of tags and tattoo and also they are different between two communities. And

because the cattle rustlers or are well harmed we concluded that the only way to eliminate this

stolen livestock transaction is through introducing the system that would be able to monitor the

movement of livestock within the country and genuine livestock trading.

Questionnaires
Questionnaires will be administered to both the pastoralists and National security agents so as to

find immediate information through research questions and other techniques for the importance

of gathering information from the respondents.

Secondary data collection

To expound on the proposed project of study, the research hopes to gather more information and

ideas from the secondary sources such as books, internet and newspapers and various journals

from governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Internet sources
It helps in searching for further information concerning the proposed projects of study and also

provides information on existing systems that have been made in the same field which

expounded my mind in my project of study and helped me to gain new ideas to incorporate into

my proposed system.

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Data analysis methods
The data collected form the research of this study will be analyzed using some data analysis tools

to provide a statistical description on the data. Tools such as Gantt charts, graphs and frequency

distribution will be used together to analyze trends and opinions of those interviewed and project

management software like Microsoft project management for project schedules management.

System analysis and design method

The proposed system project researcher will use Unified Modeling language (UML) diagrams

for the logical design to represent the proposed system. Case diagrams, entity relationship

diagrams (ERDs) including sequence diagrams will be used when designing the proposed

systems. For the actual physical design of the proposed system, the researcher will use

flowcharts, data flow diagrams (DFDs) and context diagrams explain the flow of data and

instruction within the system.

Coding and programming languages

The proposed project is a web-based application; therefore we will use MySQL, PHP, HTML,

XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

IDE Tools: Notepad++, Dreamweaver, Code lobster PHP edition.

MySQL is used as the database programming tool or language, PHP is used as the server –side

Scripting language; XHTML, HTML, CSS3 and JavaScript is the client-side scripting language.

System test approach

The project researcher ensures that, during testing the proposed system will meet the client need

(functional requirements). The intent of the system test is to find out the errors when the system

was under development and to correct them before the system can be implemented. There is no

approach or method to guarantee a system completely free of errors. However, following a

system test approach will help in mitigating risks and ensuring a successful proposed project.

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The researcher will use integration testing to find errors in complete functions and processes

within and between units and to ensure everything has been linked together correctly. System

testing will be used to ensure that the system functionality performs as specified. And finally

end-to-end testing used to validate a transaction through the entire system, not just at entry and

exit points. This means a transaction is followed through the various modules it may touch and it

must be coordinated.

References

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