Poultry Project Management in Africa

Management may be defined in a general term, as a scientific and judicious interplay in the appropriate allocations of production variables with possible alternate usage to achieve desired, futuristic objectives in an enterprise at a minimal cost implication. The simple expression of a futuristic expectation creates the inherent impression of risks and uncertainties that characterized project development especially in developing countries.

Resources that needed to be efficiently managed in poultry business enterprises can be reclassified into four categories namely: fixed resources; operational resources; management resources and capital Resources The objective of this poster report is to identify core problems responsible for poor production that limits efficient management of poultry and the role of human resources would play in poultry project management in Africa.


Analytical Method For Case Studies

The following format were used to define, study and investigate each case and these are background information, problem definition, scope of the study, tools for analysis, result /observation, problem solving capacity and follow up.

Three poultry were evaluated. The first case is an integrated project with hatchery, Breeder, Feed mills, all sited in two different locations with 20,000 Breeders, 80,000 Layers and 90,000 Hatch/Incubator Capacity

The project had no production objective in terms of ration specification and expected performances. Stocking rate and space provision. Did not conform to breeder recommendation, there by recording yield far below industry norm.

The second case is a layer project located in the Savanna region of West Africa and owned as a diversification off shoot of a conglomerate. The project is established on 200 hectares of land as an integrated commercial layer project with full capacity to house 120,000 layers. The project had provision for adequate housing of 12 layer houses and 6 rearing houses with a total capacity to crop 60,000 growers. The management system is all in all out system the project had staff strength of 400 staffs.

The third case is recently established broiler project owned by a young and dynamic trained entrepreneur who went into poultry business a few years after graduating from University with a degree in agriculture. The company was incorporated as a family business in the late eighties with a starting stock of 2000 broilers. Eight years after the commencement of this project population had grown to a total stock of 170,000 broken down as follow: broiler 120,000, breeders 32,000, and layers 18,000.


Results

All cases presented represent different management errors facing poultry industry in the third word countries, in case are reflections of ignorance and high degree of technical skill-gap deficiency observed in many poultry projects in Africa. The over all effect of such management errors on flock performances as in case A (Table 1-3). Project B showed a reflection of some projects headed by technical expert that lack management principles of adequate job delegation, sound marketing strategies which often precipitates into conflicts and poor output in performances, below project target objective (Fig 1-3). Case C showed problems of over capitalization, declining working capital and staff (Table 4).


Conclusion

The  case studies illustrate that poultry entrepreneur in Africa are gradually conscious of the need to utilize expertise advise and align employee objectives with that of the organisation through appropriate motivation packages that will minimise high staff turn over. The showed that in the next decade, Africa will witness massive expansion of market for poultry products going by the liberalization of trade. Regional cooperation and formulation of Free Trade zones and the market structure that are gradually being put on ground will relax phytozanitary barrier and enhance free movement of goods including poultry products to region where they are very scarce.