The poultry farmers’ associations and cooperatives, livestock extension agents, local poultry breeders and poultry technology innovation start-ups from Economics Community of Central African States, (ECCAS) are in Kinshasa, DRC from April 6 - 10, 2021 to discuss new technologies that promote local chicken value chain development in Central Africa. AU IBAR is organising the workshop in the framework of the Sustainable Development of Livestock for Livelihoods in Africa (Live2Africa) project funded by the European Union.
The workshop supports increased awareness creation and draws on policymakers’ attention to the benefits of the technologies, and ultimately triggers increased investment in the local poultry value chain. The event highlights the critical gaps of Central Africa Countries’ and smart possible interventions in livestock value chain to enhance productivity, efficiency, logistics in supply chain, biotechnology, policy, investment, and skills gap in science and Innovation for Livestock Development. The main constraints will be identifying recommendations and provisions to overcome these problems, ensuring a higher profit for the member states, and developing the subsector.
The specific objectives of the workshop are for the ECCAS local chicken value chain stakeholders in a participatory way to:
- Identify key components and priority interventions areas of the local chicken value chain in Central Africa
- Validate and adopt models of community-based chicken breeding programmes while addressing technical gaps in the value chain
- Highlight the relevant technology and start-up innovations to sustain the regional local chicken value chain
- Design the way forward towards developing the local chicken cooperatives, national branches of the Central Africa Poultry association, and the value chain within the region
- Develop a stepwise Action Plan to guide the sustainability of the regional local chicken value chain.
- Despite the local poultry value chain being considered a regional priority value chain in Central Africa, there is great room for growth and opportunities for the region to embrace available and novel technologies and innovations that will propel the value chain to function at its peak.
Animal Genetic Resources (AnGR) for food and agriculture are essential for Africa’s food security and contribute to the livelihoods of millions of people within the continent. Livestock products such as eggs and meat have been rated as some of the richest sources of protein and live capital sources that farmers can quickly mobilise to solve urgent financial and social family crises. Indeed, livestock hold promise to alleviate poverty and contribute significantly towards food and nutritional security and poverty alleviation, and social and gender- related challenges in rural communities.
