The Sub-Sahara African Farmers Organisation (SSAFO) says it has increased its birds production which is now between 3.5 million and 4 million birds and currently exports over 10,000 birds to the Democratic Republic of Congo – DRC on a weekly basis.
SSAFO Founder and President Munyaradzi Mulonda said the organisation does not only keep chickens but now has its own brand, noting that besides processing the chickens for export, it also supplies to the local market and has its own food outlets.
Speaking in an interview with Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Mulonda said the organisation has its own shops, butcheries, a meat processing centre in Kabwe and has employed a good number of people, adding that this is one way it has helped creat employment.
He said the organisation has grown exponentially from the time it started due to its in-house growth of chicken and outgrower scheme, which it has launched and has a number of farmers supporting it through the scheme.
He added that the organisation has continued to target the export market in order to earn the country as much foreign currency as it can through farming activities through export of chickens.
“We are trying to promote farming as a business and show that agribusiness makes sense, this project is aimed at empowering people with skills. Broiler chickens come as a day old chick, weighing 35 grams, takes over a six week period to grow and there is so much that happens in this six weeks, all these things are being taught to our members. We are now talking about introducing poultry farming at a very large scale”, he said.
Mulonda mentioned that Covid 19 really affected the organisation and things have not fully gone back to normal as some of the clients that it was working with have not recovered from the economic effects of the virus and this has also negatively affected the organisation.
He added that the organisation owns a printing press and had printed exercise books which were supposed to be sold in the first term of 2020 but unfortunately as the books were been marketed, schools were closed and all the expenses went down the drain.
He also said that some members of staff were laid off because there was not much to do and demand for our products was low during the lockdown, but later, we hired more staff as the organisation started to expand beginning of august 2020 and is now working in full scale.
Mulonda said the organisation is open to partnerships from individuals, clubs, organisations, associations, cooperatives, corporate and public entities who want to join the programme which focuses on empowering the youth.
He also noted that 2020 was an exciting year for the organisation as it managed to grow as sub-Sahara farmer’s organisation.
“We started with one programme which is the consolidated young entrepreneurs’ programme which is a youth empowerment programme for poultry farming, we have now gone into crop production”, he said.
