Challenges

The livestock subsector in Eswatini is the biggest contributor to the country’s agricultural GDP (51 per cent). Livestock-keeping is an integral part of Swazi culture and livelihood systems, providing employment and income generation opportunities for rural communities. However, farmers continue to fall short of consistently producing sufficient quantities to supply the markets. The scale of production remains low due to limited production infrastructure, particularly for chicken production. Accessing better markets is limited by low feed efficiency resulting in poor weights. Reliance on outgrower arrangements is proving costly for the farmers, which negatively affects the profitability of their enterprises. Additionally, the piggery industry in Eswatini is limited by low-value addition and limited food quality standards. 

Toward a Solution

To find innovative solutions to challenges in the smallholder livestock sector, in April 2021 the IFAD country programme in Eswatini organized a SSTC knowledge-sharing event to learn from countries that had globally recognized livestock models that were improving productivity and profitability of smallholder livestock enterprises. The event shared knowledge on production and marketing innovations in small livestock value-chains, including issues on climate change, women, young people, and nutrition, in alignment with SDGs 1 and 2 as well as IPoA priority area 2. 

The event brought together globally recognized IFAD-supported livestock projects with outstanding innovative livestock models to share their experiences on one platform. Four countries from three continents participated in the event. These are Eswatini (Southern Africa), Cambodia and China (Asia), and Brazil (South America). Over two days, a total of 58 participants managed to join the event. 

The knowledge-sharing event was scheduled during the COVID-19 lockdown period, limiting participants’ ability to gather at the same physical venue. The Eswatini country programme organized the virtual event to enable effective participation of projects in different geographic areas. The event was held on an online video conferencing platform on which participants could make presentations of their innovative livestock models in real-time. Field visits were conducted through video documentaries, which enabled participants to understand how the livestock models are operationalized by hearing directly from the farmers.  

Participants learned from the experiences of the Zhenba Bacon Traceability Project from China, GIC Solar Powered Chicken Models from Cambodia, Embrapa Goat Value Chain Innovations from Brazil, Youth Inclusion Models in the Indigenous Chicken and Goat value chains of Smallholder Market-Led Project (SMLP) and Innovations in the Financial Inclusion and Cluster Development Project (FINCLUDE) from the host country, Eswatini. The event brought to light the commonalities between the countries present and the value of exchanging evidence-based technologies that have shown success in improving the lives of smallholder farmers. These commonalities showed that the innovations from Asia and South America were replicable in Eswatini. 

The indigenous chicken models from Cambodia showed potential for application to address the productivity challenges that Eswatini farmers were facing. In Cambodia, the models have reduced the mortality of indigenous chickens by up to 20 per cent, thereby increasing the profitability of the enterprises. With incubator capacities of 300 or 500 eggs, farmers are earning $300 to $400 per month. In addition, the models have drawn greater interest and high participation from women, the elderly, and disabled segments of the population, thereby increasing opportunities for income generation among these vulnerable groups. Following the knowledge-sharing event, the SMLP project in Eswatini developed a concept note for bilateral engagements with GIC from Cambodia for deeper engagement and mutual support on the transfer of the solar-powered hatchery and chicken finishing housing technology to Eswatini.  

Due to its low cost and high impact, the bacon traceability system has the potential to improve the pig value chains in Eswatini. For example, this system implemented in the Zhenba province, China, which had an investment of $590,000 has generated the following results:  

• Smallholder farmers’ income increased by 40 per cent 
• 1,500 rural household participants 
• 20,000 specialized pig for bacon production 
• 1,200 metric tons of bacon worth 210 million yuan ($32 million) 
• This innovation could enable smallholder pig farmers in Eswatini to improve the quality of their products to access new high-value markets and boost their incomes, as it did in China. A follow-up bilateral engagement is in the pipeline to explore the transfer of the innovation to Eswatini.   

This event demonstrated that virtual SSTC knowledge-sharing events are a low-cost way of bringing together projects from different countries/continents, making it a sustainable innovation. Moreover, such events can also be held from anywhere globally, even under and in compliance with COVID-19 regulations making it easily scalable and replicable.