In support of the Ethiopian Government’s priority to increase decent job creation through entrepreneurship, the International Labour Organization (ILO) agricultural project is supporting women poultry farmers in the country to access market.
The ProAgro Ethiopia project has been supporting medium and small enterprises in the agro-processing sector with a special focus on women engaged in poultry businesses.
For instance, the project partnered with Yegna Farms, a female-owned business, to scale up support for women’s inclusive agri-business models, creating sustainable jobs in the poultry value chain.
A workshop and experience-sharing visit were organized from 25–26 July 2024. Twenty-eight female poultry growers from Holetta and Sendafa towns, along with the town mayors, Woreda/District agriculture experts, and researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Holetta Agricultural Research Center (HARC), attended the one-day workshop held in Addis Ababa.
The Holeta Agricultural Research Center indicated that they have trained 216 women poultry farmers in the two towns in chicken management and community poultry immunization for the Bovens, Sasso, and Koekoek breeds through the Tropical Platform initiative.
As a result of the collaboration between the ILO ProAgro Ethiopia project and the ILRI, technical advisory support on nutrition-sensitive agriculture is provided to these farmers by the ILRI.
The support from the ILO ProAgro project through Yegna Farms aims to assist these farmers in creating market access by collecting eggs from growers, packing them, and distributing them to the nearest market in Addis Ababa. Discussions and marketing negotiations with large businesses in Addis Ababa are currently ongoing.
The lack of quality feeds, high feed prices, fluctuations in market demand for eggs, and limited market opportunities were identified and discussed as the major challenges faced by women poultry growers.
To address these challenges, it was agreed to continue the joint effort by the ILO, ILRI, and HARC to formulate alternative, low-cost poultry feed in collaboration with Yegna Farm. Additionally, to tackle the limited market access challenge, it was agreed to put a joint effort into creating a direct market linkage with supermarkets.
On July 26, 2024, a visit to Yegna Farm, located in Bishoftu (50 km from Addis Ababa), was conducted to share experiences and discuss the way forward. The poultry farm has created job opportunities for four individuals and has 5,000 layers that produce and supply eggs to the market. Yegna Farm indicated that the high input cost of production in the poultry sector has been a significant challenge, leading to very low marginal gains in profitability, as is the case for most businesses in the sector.
This has led Yegna Farm to partner with the ILO and invest in producing its own feeds. With the support of the ILO ProAgro Ethiopia project, Yegna Farm procured two feed processing machines that will be installed in Holetta and Sendafa towns with technical support from ILRI and HARC.
