More meat milk and eggs by and for the poor
Village poultry: Transforming a
sub-sector from family hobby
to family business
Tadelle Dessie
CGIAR Livestock review and planning meeting, 10
June 2020
Photo: B. Wieland/ILRI

African Chicken Genetics Gains program

What have we been doing differently to achieve
the intended goal of building family business?
ACGG Four Pillars of Change
1. High-producing genetics that is well-adapted to low-input
production systems;
2. Farmer preferred breeds of chickens;
3. Public-private partnership for improvement,
multiplication, and delivery;
4. Women at the center to ensure success; and
5. Build functioning Public Private Partnership for
developing solutions across the value chain.

What must be different?
1. From “silver bullets” to  researched options (informed
by farmer experimentation)
2. From “we are here to offer you solutions” to “we are here
to work with you to find solutions”
3. From pure focus on pushing ‘promising strains’
to recognition of importance of O x C

Numbers talk: ACGG baseline survey, on-farm
and on-station testing!
5,859households enrolled
218,600birds tested
9improved strains
indigenous strains
15
on-station testing sites 6
3,665households surveyed
203on-farm villages enrolled

Highlights of on-Station and on-farm test results of African
Chicken Genetic Gains (ACGG) project in Nigeria Tanzania and
Ethiopia,
Increase in production and
productivity level from indigenous
to tropically adapted and more
productive chicken breeds
200 to 300 % in body weight
100 to 160 % in egg production

Partnership - Integrated into ACGG
core business
Support-Provide
support to
partners
Service-Serve the needs
of key partners (capacity
building, resource
mobilization, etc.)
Communication-Move beyond
informing to engagement
Partnership is
Key!

PartnershipPartnerships

ACGG Partners in the beginning

Kind Palms
Ventures
Olorun Osun
Farms
Partners now

CGIAR Research Program on Livestock
The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock aims to increase the productivity and profitability of livestock agri-food
systems in sustainable ways, making meat, milk and eggs more available and affordable across the developing world.
This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
The program thanks all donors and organizations which globally support its work through their contributions to the CGIAR system
livestock.cgiar.org
More meat milk and eggs by and for the poor