Private sector egged on by RIU Sierra Leone
7 October 2010

In September, RIU News reported that the Poultry Sector Validation Workshop in Sierra Leone had been a great success.

David Suale, the Country Coordinator for RIU Sierra Leone, now provides an update on developments over the past month:

"There was a great commitment from everyone at the meeting to get things going to re-establish the poultry sector in Sierra Leone. It is RIU's role to ensure these ideas are turned into actions - we are the agricultural innovation broker."

Currently most of the eggs bought by consumers in Sierra Leone are imported from countries such as India, Brazil and the Netherlands. Imported eggs are at least two weeks old and often of dubious quality; locally produced fresh eggs command a price premium but are in short supply.

RIU has established that the major bottlenecks preventing increased supply of locally produced eggs and poultry are a lack of feed concentrates and a shortage of day-old chicks.

Feed costs account for 60-70% of total poultry production costs. But the main issue is not cost; it's the current unreliability of feed supply.

David Suale explains:

"RIU wanted to ensure the poultry sector has access to uninterrupted feed supplies. So we needed also to work with maize producers. We facilitated access to the improved maize variety Western Yellow and also appropriate stocks of fertilizer for more than 16,000 farmers - more than half of whom were women. With better cropping and higher yields this intervention should help to create a constant supply of maize for the poultry industry. By brokering access to the poultry sector, maize farmers have seen a dramatic increase in their incomes."

Since the workshop, RIU Sierra Leone has been negotiating with a major regional animal feed company. Already the company has identified suitable premises in the country and a container of feed concentrates is on its way. They anticipate getting poultry feed production going by the end of December.

Until, recently day-old chicks were also imported but lack of air-freight space now limits this option. So, RIU has also been working with a group of private investors who are importing fertilised parent-stock eggs. They have built a new large-scale hatchery capable of producing 2 million chicks per year.

RIU is also in talks with a number of smaller hatchery owners around the country who are currently operating at a low capacity to see what investment is needed to scale-up production in their facilities. RIU has established that is it relatively simply issues, such as reliable power generation, which is currently holding them back.

David Suale, commenting on the experience of RIU Tanzania in their work in the poultry sector, said:

"Vera's recent update talks through the range of issues she faced in Tanzania to build the capacity for impact at scale. In Sierra Leone we are facing a similar pattern of working along the supply chain, brokering solutions to restart or scale-up production."

Following the lead from RIU Tanzania, during the recent workshop stakeholders agreed to work with the Sierra Leone Agribusiness Development Centre to lobby the Sierra Leone Government for a blanket waiver of import duties on production inputs. Currently waivers can be obtained on a case-by-case basis but the process is cumbersome. If things go well a waiver could be in place from October 2010.

David explains what's next in the plan to re-establish the poultry sector in Sierra Leone:

"We are working with private sector investors to establish out-growers for both maize and poultry. In the early phases of the project we have been concentrating on layers - but we also want to look at establishing meat processing facilities. In fact the first equipment for the processing plant is now on order."

Ian Maudlin, Director of Research Into Use, said:

"I noticed the failure in the egg market when I visited Sierra Leone in 2007 and so it is great to see how RIU is helping to remove bottlenecks to re-establishing the poultry sector.

RIU Sierra Leone is working with partners, including those from the private sector. As a result domestic poultry and egg production should soon be able to compete effectively with imported products. Brokering these sorts of partnerships with the private sector are paying dividends right across the RIU portfolio - delivering impact at scale.

It is also pleasing to see how learning from Tanzania is helping to guide Sierra Leone."