The most obvious and viable alternative is to encourage poultry farmers to add value to their eggs or the surpluses through a segmented value addition market provided through egg processing industries.
Perennial egg glut management is important for Nigeria. It is important because numerous loses occur whenever there is egg glut. The worst case of egg glut in Nigeria was recorded in the year 2017 which resulted into a lot of egg wastages. If Nigeria actually produces 13 billion table eggs as the leading egg producer in Africa, and our capital egg consumption is a mere 3.9kg per head per annum (3.9kg/head/annum) or to say 60 eggs per head per annum, this will translate to a national consumption of 8.4 billion eggs assuming a human population of 150million.
This national egg consumption is just about 65% of our annual table egg output with a gap of 4.6 billion eggs that our farmers struggle to market perhaps through long but illegal channels outside the Nigeria boarder countries such as Chad, Niger, Cameroon and some neighboring West African countries. Recently, it has become extremely difficult to push out these surpluses because of the exigency of Boko Haram insurgencies and the recent social mayhem in most northern parts of Nigeria where egg consumption is indeed on the increase. With the continuous challenges of egg excesses, the most obvious and viable alternative is to encourage poultry farmers to add value to their eggs or the surpluses through a segmented value addition market provided through egg processing industries.
This kind of value addition increases the shelf life of egg from just 30 days to 18 months and they can be captured into the national gross domestic product (GDP) via exportation. This will therefor generate foreign earning to our economy Nigeria. The obvious challenge to poultry investors or existing farmers is the task of securing the colossal fund so as to put such equipment on ground with minimal cost of capital from Nigeria banks inclusive of a guaranteed national market that consume value added eggs as industry derived demand Input. This has not been the case as industrialists are busy importing processed egg from Europe, USA and Brazil to meet their needs. How do poultry investors through their association conduct an effective industrial business plan on cost and capital requirement to convert the gap of 4.6 billion eggs to liquid or powdered egg with sustainable market that could attract egg industry expansion in Nigeria?
I sincerely believe that the Government has a vital role in creating the enabling environment to solve the above challenges through bilateral collaboration that can expose farmers’ syndicate or cooperatives to low digit fund for agricultural development like International Development Association (IDA) fund of the World Bank Loan for livestock development in the South Sahara Africa (SSA) which are fund that had been annexed and utilized by Botswana, Ethiopia and Uganda through The Alive Livestock Sector Investment Policy Toolkit (ALive LISPT) Word Bank partnership grant to livestock development of the SSA countries of which no country in West Africa had enjoyed.
Our farmers and poultry investors need to have cheap access to these kinds of less strenuous facilities in order to make healthy and less hypertensive investments. West African Government must improve on a sound preparation of their Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) ; a vital tool needed to harness this fund by governments of this region, as well as sincere cooperation of the Government with our farmers on registration of their investments not for tax purposes mainly, but to also have meaningful records that can be processed by experts to arrive at viable PRSP that will be acceptable to the World Bank so as to harness these billions of “idle” fund with the IDA branch of Work Bank.
It is important to note that these funds are donated by World philanthropist and are meant only for livestock development of the South Sahara Africa. Dr Stephen Adejoro is one of the twelve consultants from West Africa who was offered World Bank Fellowships Award to undergo this training in CIRAD France for two months. On his arrival to Nigeria, he gave a public lecture on his invitation by NVMA under the leadership of Dr Adekunle for which recommendation was given to Oyo State Government for adopting the initiative. It is possible to advance work on this in Oyo state even as we give accolades to Ondo state and the first private investors of egg value addition in Ogun state in which Dr Sansi was very much involved.
Dr Stephen Adejoro is the founder of the NGO; Livestock Industry Foundation for Africa. He advocates for mycotoxin mitigation, safer water challenges for livestock, Avian Influenza vaccination advocacy for poultry in Nigeria. The organization is rich in knowledge of which many have been hosted on our website and offered as intangible assets as charity to improve livestock production in Africa. LIFA is available for collaboration and further discussion on egg value addition and other livestock development strategies.
