Poultry production in Tanzania

The supply of indigenous chickens meets greater than 70% of demand for chicken meat and egg production in rural areas and up to 20% in urban areas within Tanzania.

Tanzania has a poultry flock comprising approximately 72 million chickens.
Approximately 40 million are indigenous breeds and 32 million are commercial poultry, which include 24 million for meat and 8 million for laying eggs.
Of the 4.7 million agricultural households in Tanzania, 3.7 million households keep poultry.
Indigenous chickens are mainly raised by rural dwellers and contribute almost 100% of the poultry meat consumed in the rural areas and 20% of eggs consumed urban areas

The traditional indigenous poultry subsystem is family orientated and an extensive scavenging dual-purpose system, with low egg production (50 eggs/year) and meat production (1.5 kg for mature chicken).
This traditional system supports the largest proportion of the national flock and the output from this system is much lower than of commercially raised poultry.
Indigenous chickens have low productivity due to their inherent low genetic potential; 70% of the poultry breeds in Tanzania are low yielding in terms of meat and egg production.

The improved system is semi-intensive, semi scavenging system with a moderately high production of 150 eggs per hen per year and 1.8 kg live weight at maturity. Both subsystems are family-orientated and traditional.
The improved subsystems are family-orientated with a mixture of improved local and imported tropical breeds.

The specialised chicken system is an intensive layers and meat production system with high productivity (2 kg live weight at maturity and 270 eggs per hen per year).

Most of the farmer marketing organisations involve small groups and tend to be concentrated in urban areas.
There is a lack of poultry slaughtering and meat processing facilities, as well as issues around the promotion of poultry meat and egg marketing.

There are many advantages of a traditional indigenous poultry system including consistent production based on largely free feed sources from the surrounding environment and use of breeds well adapted to the local environment.
The traditional indigenous poultry system is inexpensive and low input.
Traditional indigenous poultry systems suffer inadequate feed supply, high disease prevalence, predation and inadequate shelter.
There is enormous potential for the poultry industry in Tanzania to enhance food and nutrition security, while contributing to household and economic growth.

References:

Ministry of Agriculture (2018) 2016/17 Annual Agriculture Sample Survey Crop & Livestock Report, Zanzibar
LSMS Survey: https://microdata.worldbank.org/index.php/catalog/2862