Rwanda supercharges ‘go to work on an egg’ campaign by giving poor families a chicken

RWANDA is to give an African twist to one of Britain’s most successful marketing campaigns as it seeks to beat malnutrition by persuading its people to go to work on an egg.

Over the next five years, the Rwanda Agricultural Board is to give every poor family in the country an egg-laying chicken, with a pilot programme due to begin in the next few weeks.

Officials said the scheme was designed to reduce widespread malnutrition by providing people, particularly children and pregnant women, with a cheap and readily available source of protein. Due to a combination of poverty and a starch-dominated, proteinpoor diet, the growth of more than a third of Rwandan children is stunted, according to health ministry figures.

“The objective is for every Rwandan, wherever they are, to access animalresource proteins,” Solange Uwituze of the Rwandan Agriculture Board was quoted as saying by local newspapers.

Rwanda produces far fewer eggs than the global average: Britain, where 30 million eggs are eaten every day, consumes as many in a week as Rwanda does in a year. The average Rwandan eats about one egg a month – although that is up from half an egg in 2010, suggesting that demand is rising.

Officials hope that the campaign and the publicity drive surrounding it will have the same impact that the “Go to Work on an Egg” campaign did in Britain in the Fifties and Sixities. A sharp decline in Britain’s hen population during the war – largely because of a lack of animal feed – meant that shortages persisted, with egg rationing only ending in 1953.

As a result, few households regularly ate eggs and it took a series of television commercials featuring the comedian Tony Hancock as a reluctant egg-eater and the actress Patricia Hayes to change their minds.

The “Go to Work on an Egg” campaign led to consumption soaring to five eggs per person per week.

Rwanda hopes for a similarly dramatic surge, with officials pointing out the same benefits as Hayes: “eggs is easy”, “eggs is cheap” and “eggs is full of protein”.