This is certainly an interesting topic, am looking forward to a lively contribution from the fora.

Well, personally i see a high potential for speeding improvement of the African adapted livestock species in the era of genomics.

African animals - the future of livestock production in the world.

Dear Robert Mukiibi,

be careful! What do you intend to 'improve'? If a species really is adapted to its environment, there is little room for sustainable improvement, except environmental parameters are modified too. 'Adapted' in this context means 'optimised'!!

Keep in mind that allegedly successful genomic selection widely ignores epigenetic factors which for sure are significantly different in industrialised countries and Africa, respectively. Furthermore, take into consideration that getting on top of manageable environmental factors, in your situation, most probably would be a preferable strategy that simultaneously prevents you from being made subject to (egoistically) profit-oriented international breeding organisations.

kind regards

Jürg Schneebeli

Dear Robert Mukiibi

bare in mind that most of production increase is related to improvement in livestock management (feeding, including forage/feed shortage alleviation, culling policy...) see for ex. Ayalew, W., Rischkowsky, B., King, J. M. et Bruns, E. (2003). Crossbreds did not generate more net benefits than indigenous goats in Ethiopian smallholdings. Agric. Sys. 76 (3): 1137-1156, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0308-521X(02)00033-1 showing that better care of local breed increased results. 

Dozens if not hundreds of examples where management, nutrition and health need to be improved.  Adapted breeds are adapted!

Genomic indexes are only valid in the population (i.e. for given genome-environmental interactions) and breed they have been established for. As Jürg Schneebeli pointed out, genomics do not incorporate epigenetic effects, which are different in animals raised under totally different environmental conditions, and genome-environmental interactions are very likely to be totally different in your place when compared to the conditions, in which they were established. If you want to use genomics to improve breeding efficiency, you need to establish your own training data set, in order to assess SNP values for your population. This presupposes the availability of reliable breeding indexes of thousands of animals based on your population and management conditions, the latter being as standardized as possible.

As mentioned above, improving and standardizing the management (including feeding) of the livestock in your area, combined with classical selection tools, will bring you much further at this point.