Africa Poultry Multiplication Initiative – Impact evaluation results from Tanzania and Nigeria

The Africa Poultry Multiplication Initiative APMI is a private sector-led program supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented by the World Poultry Foundation. APMI seeks to provide rural, poor smallholder farmers SHFs) with access to improved breeds of chickens. These chickens are known as “dual purpose birds” DPBs), in that they are bred to grow faster and larger, and lay more eggs than local chicken breeds.

APMI provides grants to private sector producers of DPBs and supports them in making DPBs available to rural SHFs. The primary mechanism by which they do so is by setting up a network of “Brooder Units” (BUs) who purchase day-old chicks DOCs) from the poultry companies and then raise them for four to five weeks before selling them to SHFs in their communities. The BU model allows for DPBs to be vaccinated and fed through the most critical stage of their life. APMI also includes technical assistance to the poultry companies and its staff so that they can help SHFs understand the nutritional value of consuming poultry products, as well as to stress the importance of women’s roles in the poultry production process.

APMI has the potential to improve the lives of rural SHFs along multiple dimensions. First, raising improved breeds of chickens may provide smallholders with an additional source of income. Additionally, increased production of chicken meat and eggs may lead to higher consumption of these products in the household, leading to better nutrition outcomes, especially for women and children. Finally, since chicken-rearing is primarily perceived as a female-led task in many places, growing and improving the household’s chicken business may lead to greater women’s empowerment. The studies discussed in this report were designed to test these initial hypotheses. Our results provide evidence on the potential for private sector-led DPB interventions to drive more immediate production, income, and consumption effects among a rural and mostly poor target population of SHFS. In addition, since we understand that the thinking about the APMI model’s Theory of Change has evolved over program implementation, we provide evidence on whether this intervention can in addition improve aggregate measures of nutrition and women’s empowerment or whether impacts focus on immediate outcomes specific to the poultry value chain.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of owning dual-purpose chickens on smallholder farmer outcomes, with focus on flock performance, income, nutrition, and women’s empowerment. The APMI project touches many other actors along the poultry value chain, most importantly owners of Brooder Units and private-sector field staff. This report provides a snapshot of how the APMI program – on average – has impacted the lives of the typical rural participant of the program at a particular point in time after several years of implementation. The findings in this report thus reflect the impacts of the natural expansion of the APMI program, but do not tell us what the results of the program may look like if conducted in a more controlled setting based on pure DPB flocks, for example.

This report provides the findings from two impact evaluations of APMI-supported expansion of DPB access on SHFs’ outcomes in Nigeria and Tanzania. Given the differences in context and implementation, we consider the two studies as distinct and report results separately within this report. Both impact evaluations measure similar outcomes related to SHFs (mixed) flock productivity, income, nutrition, and women’s empowerment. Both impact evaluations draw samples of likely or recent DPB customers from untouched communities that were collaboratively selected with the private-sector partners as well as a comparable set of comparison communities in which DPBs were not actively marketed for the study period. We then use a quasi-experimental “prospective matching” design. In this design, purchasers of DPBs are statistically matched to households in comparable communities with limited access to DPBs who are similar to DPB purchasers on a wide array of observable characteristics at the start of the study. “Treatment” households are those who purchased DPBs at least once during the study period and “control” households are those who did not purchase any DPBs (and did not have easy ability to purchase). Results are measured through household surveys conducted 1.54 years after a household’s initial purchase of DPBs. Baseline data collection took place from 2019 to 2020 and endline data collection took place from 2022 to 2023.

Read the endline report here.