Chicken farm project to help Bolster health in Mozambique
Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan are heading a chicken farming pilot project in Mozambique to improve public health by bolstering the economy.
Project Frango is designed to be a “self-sustaining Mozambican incubator project” that will train local residents to start and manage a chicken farm. The goal of the project is for 16 families per year to learn about raising chickens and running a farm business.
Dr. Ron Siemens, of the U of S College of Medicine, is helping spearhead the project alongside the local community and the Universidade Lurio in Mozambique. He said people often don’t understand how closely income and health are linked.
“We’ve seen that the biggest indicator of health worldwide is family income,” he said. “Lots of people had very small farms and five or six children ... and they’re just basically subsisting.”
Siemens’ friend and counterpart in Mozambique is Dr. Celso Belo, the dean of health sciences at the Universidade Lurio. While on a visit to Saskatoon, Belo said this new project stands out because it is not being “parachuted” in by an outside organization, but rather it involves working within the community.
“You’re not giving people food, but you are giving them the tools to produce their own food,” he said. “You’re helping these local people to develop and improve.”
Project Frango’s website refers to Mozambique as one of the world’s poorest countries, with high rates of maternal mortality and extremely low average yearly income.
Siemens said the families enrolled in the program will receive profits throughout the yearlong mentoring process, and the program will create a sustainable business model in the area. According to the project’s website, families will leave the project with the knowledge and resources necessary to start their own farms and boost the economy.
Siemens referred to chicken as a popular but expensive part of the Mozambican diet, and said the market for chicken is currently “wide open” for this initiative to make an impact in the area.
This project isn’t the only one Siemens and Belo have worked on to improve conditions in Mozambique. A program — launched in 2015 in the same area of Mozambique by the International Development Research Centre called the Alert Community PREPARED Hospital Project — aimed to provide better knowledge and access to medical services for women and children.
Siemens said the support of Belo and the university in Mozambique — and having interest from the community — is “vital” to this kind of project, adding that we are now past the time where imposing programs on a community without consultation would be acceptable.
“We wouldn’t be working there if we weren’t partnered with someone,” Siemens said. “I think ‘catalyst’ is the best term for Canadian involvement.”
Belo referred to the project as “more complete” than many ideas proposed for support work in African countries because it focuses on the root issue of poverty while still addressing public health.
“It’s improving the family situation,” he said. “It’s building capacity within the family, and giving them better opportunities to have education and health.”
Project Frango is getting local support from Novos Horizontes, a Mozambican poultry company that will run the program’s training farm and provide chickens.
But one of the keys for the project’s success is that the local community is behind the project, according to Siemens and Belo.
“It’s their land ... it will be developed in land they’ve identified,” Belo said. “They’re following the project. They’re part of the project.”
Funding is currently underway for Project Frango, and the researchers are looking for more donations to get things started. But Siemens and Belo are confident that they will be able to finish funding the project in time to build the farms on schedule.