Higher Education In Animal Breeding In Developing Countries – Challenges And Opportunities J.M. Ojango *† , J.M. Panandam ‡ , A.K.F.H. Bhuiyan § , M.S. Khan ** , A.K. Kahi † , V.E. Imbayarwo-Chikosi †† , T.E. Halimani †† , I.S. Kosgey † and A.M. Okeyo ∗ Introduction Livestock in developing countries contribute to livelihoods by providing nutrients, socio- cultural needs and food security. Within these countries, a diversity of species is found whose potentials have neither been fully explored nor exploited. In addition, outputs from animals are kept low due to harsh climates, inadequate feed resources, diseases, inappropriate breeding practices, unfavourable policies and poor infrastructure (Seré et al., 2008). The Global Plan of Action (GPA), as internationally agreed upon in the Interlaken Declaration (FAO, 2007), spells out the needs for improved productivity and long term breeding strategies to enable sustainable management of livestock within these countries. A critical step in ensuring this is the strategic development of a strong knowledge and skills base among the farmers, frontline technical support staff, policy implementers, researchers, university lecturers and technology transfer agents through planned and concerted capacity building. Within developing countries, higher education institutions (HEI) when well supported and linked with other relevant actors through active networks can effectively serve as prime creators and conveyors of knowledge, and can deliver support for national efforts to raise standards of living and alleviate poverty. Indeed the wealth—or poverty of a nation depends on the quality of higher education (World Bank 2000). In HEI, well designed academic programmes run by high quality faculty, committed students and sufficient resources are required. Building a critical pool of well trained individuals in fields related to agricultural production and with relevant soft-skills plays a catalytic role in economic growth and development through availing individuals able to address rapidly changing technological, policy and cultural environments. However, developing countries have inadequate human capacity in animal genetics and breeding (AGB) which is a major impediment to developing and implementing livestock improvement programmes, policies and strategies. This paper provides an overview of the current training programmes related to AGB in HEI in developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South-East Asia, highlights * International Livestock Research Institute, Box 30709, Nairobi,00100 Kenya † Egerton University, Department of Animal Sciences Box 536, Egerton, 20115, Kenya ‡ Department of Animal Science, Universiti Putra, 43400 UPM Serdang, Malaysia § Department of ABG, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh 2202, Bangladesh ** Deptartment of ABG, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan †† Department of Animal Science University of Zimbabwe