From the Field

Contact: Leah Mulcahy | USA Poultry & Egg Export Council | [email protected]

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. – The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) has received a four-year $21.4 million dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to enhance poultry production in Tanzania and Nigeria. Working closely with government and in-country private sector partners, the WPF will lead a project that will catalyze a transformation of rural poultry production in these two countries. This initiative will increase poultry production and productivity through the access of low-input dual-purpose birds, increase rural household income, improve household nutrition, and empower women.

“This grant provides us with an opportunity to implement a strategy that creates access to improved genetics to the rural farmers, provides technical assistance and training, and offers access to markets that may not have been possible before,” said Randall Ennis, CEO of the World Poultry Foundation. “Our goal is to impact 2.5 million households across Tanzania and Nigeria by the end of this four-year initiative.

“Unlike past approaches of delivering free chicks and feed to the rural farmers, this project will focus on training and extension support to build a sustainable value chain,” Ennis said. “Another key component of the project is the establishment of over 1,500 entrepreneurial enterprises – primarily owned and managed by women – that will supply healthy brooded and vaccinated chicks to the rural smallholder farmers.”

About the World Poultry Foundation

The World Poultry Foundation (WPF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 whose mission is to help solve hunger and poverty issues and promote economic development in distressed areas and emerging markets outside the United States through the production and consumption of poultry by empowering farmers in developing regions.