IGAD Sheikh Technical Veterinary School and Reference Centre (ISTVS) was launched today at a ceremony attended by government officials, partners, school administration, parents and students in the highlands town of Sheikh, Somaliland.

Ahmed Yonis Habbane, IGAD’s Program Manager for Planning and Coordination, representing the Executive Secretary, underlined the importance of the livestock for the livelihood of the people in the IGAD region. He told participants that additional curriculum was planned for the school which will soon become a fully-fledged university and IGAD’s Center of Excellence.

Somaliland Minister for livestock emphasizing the importance of the school said that his government employed all the graduates from ISTVS and will continue to recruit all the upcoming graduates from the school.

IGAD Sheikh Technical Veterinary School and Reference Centre (ISTVS) is aimed  to provide pastoralists in the Region of the Horn of Africa with better veterinary services. STVS began as a project in 2002 with international funding (European Union, Danish Government, Italian Cooperation), implemented by Terra Nuova and under the auspices of African Union, Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources. Now, a well-established tertiary education institution, it operates a fully-fledged regime with modern academic facilities within a state-of-the-art socially interactive environment. Affiliated to Makerere University (Uganda) since 2009, ISTVS has built strong institutional and academic links with peer institutions of higher learning both within the region and at international level. The school was recently adopted by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) as one of its specialized regional institutions and henceforth is referred as ISTVS.