Published on April 19, 2021
Successful dual purpose poultry trainings in Mozambique and Zimbabwe
On March 15-19, 5-day training sessions were held to educate the distribution members of the SAPPSA project on poultry management and give support in sales and marketing. The trainings were run in collaboration with Hendrix Genetics, SASSO, and the World Poultry Foundation.
The goal of the SAPPSA project, initiated in 2018 by Hendrix Genetics, with the funding of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is to give smallholder farmers in Africa access to improved genetics that perform well in challenging local conditions. SAPPSA builds upon and actively cooperates with existing initiatives like the ‘African Poultry Multiplication Initiative’ (APMI), led by the World Poultry Foundation (WPF).
The APMI model operates by securing the chain between hatcheries, mother units, and rural households. The mother units are responsible for raising the day-old chicks into pullets. Pullets are then sold to rural households. Providing access to improved breeds is one thing but providing technical support to thousands of mother units spread throughout the country requires people with a solid foundation in poultry production.
In an effort to provide more smallholders with access to dual-purpose chickens, WPF and Hendrix Genetics started two new joint programs with Novos Horizontes in Mozambique and with Hamara in Zimbabwe. Hendrix Genetics, through its traditional poultry brand SASSO, provides the parent stock chickens and brings in its technical expertise on raising poultry. The World Poultry Foundation offers financial support and technical expertise to help the local poultry distributors develop the distribution system. Both programs started on March 1st, 2021.
In the week of 15-19 March, a 5-day training program was organized to train the newly hired staff of each distributor, more than 25 people in each country. The training taught people to provide technical support to mother units on how to raise poultry, as well as support them with their marketing and sales. Some energizer exercises and practical demonstration kept the groups focused and gave some extra motivation. Naomi Duijvesteijn, Director of R&D at SASSO, Randall Ennis, CEO of the World Poultry Foundation, and Wytse Vellema, Senior Program Manager at the World Poultry Foundation participated via Q&A sessions, where they addressed specific questions raised by the participants. At the end of the training, the attendees received an official training certificate, as well as a manual and nice explanatory videos.
Training session in Mozambique
Training session in Zimbabwe
Energizer activity
These trainings are the first milestone on the road to providing tens of thousands of rural households the opportunity to increase their income and family nutrition. They are an integral part of our continuous efforts to support local African farmers, secure access to poultry parent stock and improve chicken breeds for this developing region.
Training promotion
