Wanted: private investors to scale-up indigenous poultry farming in Tanzania
11 April 2011

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Over the past two years DFID-RIU funding has enabled the RIU Tanzania team to develop and implement a contract rearing model to commercialise the indigenous poultry sector in Tanzania. The initiative is progressing well and so now they are advertising for private sector investors to work with them to increase the scale of operations.

Vera Mugitta, country coordinator, RIU Tanzania, said:

"The RIU Africa Programmes and Best Bets met recently in Nairobi. At the meeting Ian Maudlin, the RIU Director, told us that we should go out and consolidate the work we doing with the private sector and build sustainable businesses. We are looking at how we can work with the private sector in Tanzania to create poultry businesses that work in an ethical and inclusive way. We are now actively seeking the commercial partners that can move us forward.

If we want to eradicate poverty, we have to increase peoples' ability to sell. In the process, everyone will be buying inputs and we can see how virtuous circles of business development can be set in train. It is essential that we develop partnerships with businesses who share our values. We are not putting social development ahead of business development - we are just working hard to make sure that some more marginalised and vulnerable members of society are brought along with us. This is the way we do business at RIU Tanzania."

RIU Tanzania is currently placing advertisements in local newspapers seeking commercial partners who can:

• Buy and/or sell between 10,000 and 50,000 mature indigenous chickens per month
• Rent holding pens for keeping more than 10,000 live mature indigenous chickens before they are slaughtered or sold to traders and markets
• Run a slaughter house with a minimum capacity of 1,000 chickens per day
• Supply large volumes of high quality poultry drugs and vaccines to farmers in remote areas
• Provide extension/advisory services to rural farmers and other growers
• Manage breeding/grandparent farms and become a clean source of parent stock
• Produce and supply large quantities of fertilised chicken eggs to hatcheries from quality breeder flock/parent stock
• Partner RIU to expand the initiative to other regions in Tanzania and reach more farmers

Key facts about the RIU-backed indigenous poultry business in Tanzania:

• There is a network of more than 3,500 farmers in Pwani, Dodoma and Singida regions, each keeping between 100 - 300 birds.
• Chickens mature in 3 -4 months: 50,000 mature chickens are ready for consumption every month. This volume is increasing as more regions are covered and more farmers are being recruited through contract poultry keeping.
• Contract farming assures farmer's ability to purchase inputs including chicks, drugs, vaccines, feeds and extension services.
• There is now a network of 13 hatcheries producing about 91,000 chicks a week
• 15 out-growers have signed contracts to raise medium to large-scale parent stocks and supply fertilized eggs to the 13 hatcheries whose total growth capacity is expected to reach 250,000 chicks per week this year.
• Stakeholders are well coordinated to deliver poultry services and inputs including veterinary drugs, vaccines, poultry feeds, extension, technical information and relevant business development services.
• Contract farming is being rolled out to 6 more regions this year (Morogoro, Tanga, Iringa, Njombe, Ruvuma and Mbeya) as well as reaching more farmers in the current regions.
• More vulnerable groups like the elderly, people living with disability (i.e. the blind, physically challenged, deaf, albinos, etc.) are being supported to enter into poultry contract keeping.

Initial response to the adverts has been encouraging. Vera Mugittu, managing director of Muvek Development Solutions Ltd, which has been contracted to run RIU Tanzania, was surprised to learn that the advert had reached further than she had anticipated. She explains:

"It is circulating in the Diaspora! Tanzanians living and working abroad want to partner with their relatives and invest."