Overview

Encouraging sustainable poultry production in Mali will require a combined infrastructural and educational effort. A fundamental need exists for improved genetics, reproduction, nutrition, husbandry, disease prevention, and marketing. Efforts to address those issues will require an in-depth educational program to sustain and build upon improvements in local poultry production. Increasing poultry production in Mali is a viable method of increasing income and adaptive capacity of women in that country. Our vision is to pilot an innovation by building a small, but expandable, model hatchery in a peri-rural area of Mali that would serve as a center for improving the genetics and health of chicks available to local poultry producers. This hatchery would also serve as a hub of a poultry extension program that would develop outreach programs to women to directly impact small poultry producers in the region. This center would start and coordinate a marketing cooperative (or association of growers) that would both develop educational programs and expand the selling of live birds, eggs and chicks. This center will be a classic demonstration project that will build capacity to support small poultry producers. It will provide both producers and other groups (government, philanthropic, private, etc.) with a clear model and process, educational tools, and technical consultation networking for dramatically improving and increasing poultry production in Mali and significantly enhancing economic opportunity for rural and peri-rural women.