Microsoft’s founder and one of Africa’s greatest philanthropists, Bill Gates, recently advised an audience on the importance of chickens for the mitigation of poverty in Western Africa. Speaking on the 68th floor of the World Trade Center in New York City, the world’s richest man spoke about this new investment vehicle which he argues will deliver sky-high returns.
“There is no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens,” said Gates at the 5th annual Forbes philanthropy summit. According to Gates, the aim is to take the percentage of households with chicken in West Africa from 5 to 30 percent, in each country. He also stated his ambitious project, in collaboration with Heifer international called ‘coop dreams,’ will boost nutrition and income levels in the most impoverished areas in the West African region.
True to his trademark style, the initiative is mathematically grounded. A farmer who starts with three hens and one rooster can breed them to have 12 chickens within three months and 250 within a year. One chicken in Africa sells for roughly $5. That means a small starter kit of four birds could yield a yearly flock worth $1,250, a sum twice as high as the extreme poverty line of $700 a year.
The expenses involved for the farmers are minimal as the vaccine for Newcastle disease which can wipe out a large flock costs just 20 cents. The chicken seek out their own food such as worms and bugs and chicken coops are relatively cheap, and require not much more than wires and sticks.
Genetics are also important in breeding chickens as the American breed is more productive than its African counterpart. But the African breeds are better resistant to diseases and hot climates. The foundations are thus looking to cross breed the two in an effort to produce special breeds that are very productive and are resistant to heat and diseases.
Melinda Gates, philanthropist and wife to the billionaire, has long focused the foundation’s efforts on empowering women and women are expected to benefit from this scheme. Chickens, unlike cows and goats, do not stray to far away from the house and can thus be looked after by women who generally stay closer to the house.
Gates, who stepped down as Microsoft CEO in 2000, will donate 10,000 vaccinated chickens to get the initiative started in an effort to boost nutrition and local incomes. The foundation expects to reach its 30 percent target in 5 years and has already began the operations in Ethiopia investing 7 million dollars in an elaborate operation to get farmers started.
There are over 50 million people living in extreme poverty, and the figures even in the highest economic performers like Nigeria are alarmingly high. The Bill Gates and Melinda Foundation have made great strides in the eradication of malaria, responsible in part for the decline in malaria deaths on the continent by over 60 percent and now look to widen their focus to mitigating extreme poverty in the country.
Not everyone is thrilled with his seemingly simple proposition; critics retort that this is a public stunt, which does not address the underlying problems in Africa. Bolivia, another target country of the scheme was outraged by the donation of 10,000 chickens asserting that they have a formidable poultry industry producing 197 million chickens a year and exporting 36 million annually. “Gates does not know Bolivia’s reality to think we are living 500 years ago, in the middle of the jungle not knowing how to produce. Respectfully, he should stop talking about Bolivia, and once he knows more, apologise to us,” said César Cocarico, the country’s Minister of Land and Rural Development.
The Minister asserted that the initiative is theoretically appealing but the implementation will not be as smooth without hands-on training at the beginning of the process. Numerous poultry farmers have failed by trying to dive head first into this industry with little knowledge about it. And while the process is believed to be straightforward, there is always a latent risk of collapse if rearers aren’t diligently prepared for contingencies. As such, the new poultry rearers will need agricultural and contingency training in order to operate efficiently over a period of time.
The target group are those in extreme poverty and a system has to be devised to prevent them from prematurely consuming livestock to the detriment of their future income. Whether or not Nigeria welcomes the initiative is still unknown. Although its effects may not necessarily be in view of the diversification push by the Nigerian government to shift away from the oil and gas sector, it gets families involved in in the agricultural sector and better positioned to take opportunities that may arise when the government’s initiatives mature and begin to pick up steam.
Nonetheless, efforts like this which are focused and concerted, are welcome to aid local entrepreneurs, philanthropists and the government in the battle against prevalent poverty in the region. It also has a chance of reaching its target beneficiaries faster than foreign aid received by African governments. The scheme aimed at empowerment, gives these farmers a debt free path to self-sufficiency. The saying goes, give a man fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. In West Africa, there are a lot more people who can raise chickens than can go out fishing.
