1. The poultry industry in Tanzania can do better
Livestock Expo and National Milk Week - 30th May – 1st June, 2018 BY
Vera Florida MKENDA (PhD)
MUVEK DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS

2. Dynamics in the industry since independence
: Unregulated and 100 percent subsistence
: Commercial exotic breeds introduced as a 100 percent public activity
: The public sector collapses and a weak private sector emerges
1987–1997: Demand for eggs and meat overwhelms the private sector
: Production increased but the quality of livestock services dropped, Regulating the industry became necessary
: Introduced buying chicks, supplementary feeding and routine vaccination to the traditional system

3. Geographical distribution of the poultry flock
Mostly small farms
Found everywhere
Producing variable quantities of variable quality (weight and breed)
Based on the 2014/15 Annual Agricultural Sample Census

4. Poultry production systems
The Livestock Master Plan (TLMP) has divided the poultry industry into:
The traditional production system (Is the largest raising about 70 percent of the national flock;
The commercial production system (Still developing, mostly in urban and peri-urban areas; Raise both crossbreeds and pure breeds of layers and broilers Includes breeder farms, hatcheries, poultry farms (layers and broiler farms), traders and processors)
The commercial production system is further divided into :
The improved family production system
The tropical improved chicken production system, and
Expanded Specialized /Commercial Chicken

5. Interrogating the poultry innovation space
The innovation space is currently dominated by:
Traditional system by over 70% (Rural, small, less productive breeds, low input use, low innovation, low bio-security, etc.)
Public sector powers (public extension, research, programs and NGOs) who actively seek to preserve the ‘traditional-ness”
Mentalities and ideologies that hinder innovation (e.g. seeking to make rural producers feel self-sufficient in inputs and knowledge)
Disconnected actors (organizational thinness and fragmentation as a result of the self-sufficiency mentality)

6. Analyzing dominant powers
The poultry industry‘s innovation space is dominated by public actors i.e. public extension staff, NGOs and donor-funded development projects.
As the industry‘s main sources of new knowledge and innovations, they try to incrementally improve on indigenous social knowledge and organization.
These actors tend to deliberately avoid promoting radical shifts including linking producers with commercial actors i.e. they discourage the use of commercial inputs.
Therefore, since they are the main players with resources, their bias towards promoting the extensive production system makes the shift to commercial production difficult.

7. Where will growth come from?
By 2013, the number of chicken kept or owned per household had not changed much, since the livestock sample census of 2002/3. Implying that, the observed growth was basically driven by the emergence of medium scale commercial poultry farmers, mainly located near towns and cities (Match Maker Associates, 2013).
This means, growth in the industry can only come from reducing the size of the traditional sector which involves:
Influencing the dominant powers in the innovation space towards more private sector dominance,
Changing behaviors, practices and mentalities of all actors
Influencing structure through more business-minded institutional arrangements and interaction
Increasing investment in innovation and technology adoption

8. Increase efficiency in small poultry enterprises
Develop strong and profitable supply chains
Re-organize small poultry enterprises towards commercialization (promote specialization)
Connect and promote interactions between producers and suppliers (Reduce
Build networks among producers, intermediaries and suppliers

9. Promote innovation Reduce organizational thinness,
Meet the socio-cost of building the minimal conditions for innovation
Address fragmentation
Facilitate interactions
Facilitate emergence of intermediary and brokers’ roles
Induce a sense of self-insufficiency among actors
Induce exogenous shocks to trigger investment in the industry
Facilitate a critical-mass of actors to change routines

10. Why the unproductive system persists
[… ‘an old technology, but also a traditional organization model locks a national economy into an inferior option of development and may in the long run result in a loss of competitiveness and the retarding of economic growth’ (Castells, 1997; cited in Schienstock, 2004; p.xx).] Therefore, to increase the industry’s performance we need strategies that address structural, political and cognitive (mentality) issues

11. Path creation towards a productive and competitive poultry industry
Cognitive Lock-in
Resource Lock-in
Path creation towards a productive and competitive poultry industry
Investment in technology
Effective breed
Knowledge and information sharing
Value addition
Chicks supply
Political Lock-in

12. Conclusions and Recommendations
Provide farmers with all options and allow them to make their own choices. If they can commercialize maize, tea, coffee, etc. – why not poultry?
We need to re-consider our position on promoting self-sufficiency It is only a sense of self-insufficiency that trigger an interaction and consequently innovation.
We need to interrogate how we define food security in Tanzania because everybody should not produce only what he/she consumes; and too much diversification kills specialization which is important for business and growth
Support investment to create new actors and relevant institutions to address. We have to build necessary institutions.

13. Deliberately facilitate ‘unlocking’ and ‘path creation’
Through facilitation, linking, creating partnerships and cushioning small producers from risks;
Doing that will build networks, promote learning and transform the Tanzania rural chicken industry from being dominated by subsistence- based backyard activities, into a commercially viable industry that improves rural income as well as attracting more actors and investment to upgrade processes and technologies.
Small producers must enter the market as one big actor through aggregation and working with intermediaries