By Dr Christian Tiambo
Kennedy Vijayalakshmy
Jaydip Rokade
Blaise Amaud Hako
Ram Pratim Deka
Frank-Lawale Anui
Local chicken meat value addition: Lessons from Asia for Africa
Local chicken meat value addition is a high-impact opportunity for inclusive growth in Africa. Poultry’s short cycles, low entry costs, and rising demand make it accessible to smallholders, especially the most deprived groups. Yet indigenous chickens remain under-commercialised due to low productivity, weak genetics, high mortality, and poor market linkages.
Research from Africa and Asia shows strong potential for expanded consumption and improved performance. Enhancing productivity, processing, and structured market access can raise incomes, strengthen nutrition, empower smallholder farmers, and build rural resilience. Given its wide household reach, local chicken value addition can transform a largely untapped resource into a driver of rural development.
Key lessons from Asia Asia provides important lessons for strengthening value addition in African local-chicken meat systems, drawing from long experience with village poultry and smallholder-focused innovation.
A central insight is the emphasis on genetic improvement of dual-purpose, locally adapted chickens rather than reliance on exotic broilers that underperform in low-input environments.
Initiatives such as ILRI’s Asian Chicken Genetic Gains (AsCGG) programme develop birds suited to tropical conditions, farmer preferences, and semi-scavenging systems. Breeds like Vanaraja and Kuroiler demonstrate how dual-purpose, low-input, and disease-resilient chickens can enhance productivity while keeping feed and infrastructure costs low, thus making value addition more feasible for smallholders.
Equally important are institutional and community-based models that integrate technical, organisational, and financial support. Asian experiences, led by ILRI, ACIAR, FAO, IFAD, and national partners, show the importance of farmer’s cooperatives, microcredit, shared hatcheries, training, and thermotolerant vaccines. Successful examples include Bangladesh’s farmer led poultry programmes and Cambodia’s semi-intensive clustered systems.
These structures enable consistent supply, efficiency, and quality needed for processing and market access. Asia also highlights the potential of product diversification and market development, including meat loaves, nuggets, pickled eggs, and gizzard pickles, supported by innovations such as mini-hatcheries and QR-code traceability.
Long-term sustainability relies on public– private partnerships, breeder supply systems, vaccination services, and data[1]driven approaches such as genotype testing and farmer-preference analysis.
Together, these lessons offer a roadmap for developing resilient, inclusive, and value-added local-chicken chains in Africa. Leveraging lessons from Asia, value addition in African local chicken systems can create sustainable rural impact by focusing on improved genetics, animal health, community organisation, processing, market access, capacity building, and overall sustainability.
Genetic strategy:
Deploy dual-purpose, low-input chicken breeds or crossbreeds suited to African village systems. Focus on resilience, disease tolerance, growth, and scavenging compatibility. Engage smallholders in participatory breeding to prioritise traits like meat yield, flavour, and temperament. Use local “mother units” or models like APMI to link parent stock with community and smallholder farmers.
Health and vaccination infrastructure:
Scaling thermotolerant vaccines for Newcastle disease and training community-based animal health workers improves poultry health, strengthens rural resilience, and promotes adoption in areas with limited cold-chain infrastructure. Community and institutional organisation: Producer clusters and farmer-led cooperatives can manage production, hatcheries, and marketing.
Semi-intensive units and low-cost mini hatcheries enable local chick production, training, and infrastructure access, boosting self-sufficiency and reducing reliance on external suppliers.
Value addition and processing: Community processing units can convert live birds into value-added products tailored to local tastes, using traceability and branding (e.g., QR codes) to access premium urban markets.
Market linkages and business models:
Cooperative and institutional partnerships, supported by public-private collaborations, link rural producers to urban markets, with models like APMI enabling sustainable, subsidy-free value chains. Capacity Building and
Training: Train farmers in husbandry, nutrition, disease management, and business skills, using innovation platforms to foster collaboration and adaptive learning. Sustainability and Scaling: Scalable parent stock and community level multiplication, combined with monitoring and government engagement, ensure lasting impact and integration of local chicken value chains into broader rural development.
Evidence-based examples
The Kuroiler model in India demonstrates that targeted breed improvement combined with innovative distribution networks can dramatically transform smallholder poultry systems. Kuroilers, dual-purpose chickens bred for both meat and eggs, are hardy enough for low-input, scavenging-based rural environments.
Distribution relies on decentralised “mother units,” enabling local entrepreneurs to rear chicks and supply neighbouring villages, thereby ensuring last-mile access and generating microenterprise opportunities. Field trials in Uganda indicate that Kuroilers significantly outperform indigenous chickens, producing roughly 200 eggs per year (vs. 40–50 from traditional stock), exhibiting faster growth, higher survival, and improved body weight.
Adoption of this model has led to income gains exceeding 300 percent and improved household nutrition, while promoting farmers’ and youth economic empowerment. In Kenya, indigenous poultry systems, central to rural livelihoods and food security, can similarly achieve higher economic and nutritional impact through breed improvement and value-chain interventions. Locally adapted improved breeds or crossbreeds can produce 200–280 eggs per year, compared to 80–100 from traditional birds. However, productivity gains alone are insufficient.
Combining improved genetics with aggregation, small-scale processing, structured market access, biosecurity training, and gender-sensitive extension allows households to capture higher returns, create employment, and enhance nutrition. Evidence from Kenya shows that improved indigenous chickens such as KALRO-Kienyeji mature faster, reach market weight sooner, and, when linked to cooperatives and credit access, increase household incomes by 30–100 percent relative to live-bird sales. Overall, both the Kuroiler model in India and improved indigenous poultry systems in Kenya illustrate that integrating breed improvement with organised production, processing, and market-oriented interventions can transform smallholder poultry into a sustainable pathway for income, nutrition, and empowerment.
- Centre for Tropical Livestock Genetics and Health (CTLGH) – ILRI, Nairobi, Kenya
- 2- Green Gold AgroVenture, Yaounde, Cameroon
- International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), New Delhi-India.
- Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) – CARI, Izatnagar, India.
- University of Dschang – Dschang, Cameroon