Confronting Poverty and Child Malnutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa with the Noiler Bird
Smallholder farmer with her Noilers * Credit: Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery
In Nigeria, children were not normally given eggs to eat due to an old myth that children who ate eggs would grow up to steal. This belief unfortunately persists and is prevalent in many cultures in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, depriving millions of children of essential proteins that are necessary for their growth and well-being. According to the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), “Malnutrition is the direct or underlying cause of death for 45% of all under-five [year-old] children. Nigeria has the second highest burden of stunted children in the world, with a national prevalence rate of 32% of children under five. An estimated 2 million children in Nigeria suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM)…Seven percent of women of childbearing age also suffer from acute malnutrition.” It is these heart-rending statistics which Dr. Ayoola Oduntan set on a mission to address using animal protein.
Dr. Ayoola Oduntan has over 30 years of experience in the Nigerian poultry industry and is currently the Group Managing Director of Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery and natnudO Foods. He is also the Chairman/Managing Director of Raw Material and Commodities Nig. Ltd and Seabless Fishing Company. Previously, he served at Pfizer Livestock Feeds Ltd and worked at SEEPC Sanders Nigeria Ltd where he held several management positions. He is the past National President of the Poultry Association of Nigeria and a member of the Nigeria Veterinary Medical Association. In 1990, he graduated as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna state. He attended the Harvard Business School (HBS) Agribusiness Seminar as a student and as a protagonist, with his companies being joint subjects of an HBS Case Study. I recently had a conversation with Dr. Oduntan to discuss his background, vision and goals.
Dr. Oduntan was born to a professional middle-class family and grew up in the megacity of Lagos. Like most Nigerian middle-class children in the 1970s, he went away to Federal Government College, Ilorin, Kwara State. This was one of the several secondary boarding schools established by the Federal Government of Nigeria, known as unity schools. Children from all 36 states of Nigeria were admitted every year in a bid to foster national unity. He then went on to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State, where he received his degree in Veterinary Medicine. Aftergraduation, he did his compulsory National Youth Service Corps year at Pfizer Livestock Feeds, located in Kaduna State. Upon completion, he was employed at Sanders Feeds, to work at Amo Sanders Feeds, which was jointly owned by a French multinational company and the Amoje family in Awe. Awe is a rural town in the western state of Oyo, Nigeria, well known for its various distinguished academics, and for its industrialists, notably Sir Anthony Ojewole Amoje. Sir Amoje had significant interests in that small city until the middle of the last century. Amo Farms is named after Sir Amoje.
Dr. Oduntan stayed within the group of companies for about 12 years, attaining managerial status. By that time, the foreign partners wanted to leave Nigeria, and business was failing. When the company started looking for buyers, he offered to buy it. “The managing director at the time had a good laugh,” he recalls. However, in the absence of any other buyers, they finally sold their share in the two smaller companies to him in 2002. He rebooted the companies, re-christening the feed mill business as Amo Byng Nigeria Ltd and the farm/hatchery business as Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery Ltd. Since 2002, these companies have grown significantly, and are the major industries in Awe and now have branches in other states across the nation.
Dr. Oduntan also invested over eight years and millions of dollars to develop the first dual-purpose bird in West Africa, which he called the Noiler. There are hundreds of chicken breeds recognized worldwide which can be classified into three primary categories: laying eggs, meat-producing and dual-purpose breeds. His team, led by experienced geneticist Dr. Anand Burra, had the vision to establish a pedigree breeding and selection process that would produce a dual-purpose chicken which to help solve the problems of poverty, infant mortality, child malnutrition and gender inequality. This would be achieved through a chicken which would provide meat and eggs as protein for the whole family, and which would be primarily reared and sold by women, thereby improving their status and decision-making power in the rural community. “Everyone thought we were crazy,” he says. Their objective was to develop a hardy disease-resistant bird along the lines of the indigenous chicken, which is the chicken of choice in Nigeria because of its distinctive taste and texture. Unlike the indigenous chicken, which is often quite scrawny and muscular, this bird would have the ability to convert feed into weight gain and would lay eggs regularly. In addition, this chicken would be easily reared by women in rural communities, and used to raise incomes, feed families more wholesomely, and importantly, combat child malnutrition.
After years of effort, the research team succeeded; the Noiler was born. It is a genetically optimized dual-purpose chicken breed which is similar in looks and taste to the native chicken, but is resistant to diseases, produces four times more eggs and three times more meat. The name, Noiler, comes from the combination of Nigeria and Broiler (a chicken raised for meat production). When asked about the name choice, Dr. Oduntan said, “I wanted to honor Nigeria. I wanted something we would all be proud of and share across the world.”
Noiler birds in the field * Credit: Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery
The Noiler is distributed through a business model that ensures increased economic empowerment for women, who are the most disadvantaged in Nigeria — penniless and voiceless in most instances, and hardly visible except when they are going out to perform some household duties. Since the Noiler’s main food source is scavenging, it can thrive on low cost feed and can be kept in backyards, just like native chickens. This makes it easier for rural women to raise these birds and to feed their children eggs. To address malnutrition in rural communities, Dr. Oduntan said, “I need as many children as possible eating as many eggs as possible within the first five years of their lives.”
Noilers are first produced in the Amo Farm hatchery and then sold to what are known as Mother Units (MU). MUs are enterprising women with some poultry experience, who buy at least 300 day-old chicks for about N350 (US$0.75) a bird, and raise them for about five weeks, giving them high-quality feed and all required vaccines. At five weeks, these birds have grown considerably and are then sold to smallholder farmers — also women — for about N1400 (US$3) each, with the MUs making about 30-35% profit on each bird. The smallholder farmers are encouraged to buy an equal number of cocks and hens. The birds are kept in whatever spaces the farmers choose. Some put them in small rooms in their houses, others in large coops outside, and some leave them outside to range freely where they scavenge and are fed farm and household wastes. By 20 weeks the males weigh 2.5 kg to 3.5 kg, as opposed to the indigenous breeds, which weigh an average of 1.5 kg by 40 weeks.
At this stage, the smallholder farmers are encouraged to sell the cocks for meat and to keep the hens for a year so they can eat the eggs laid and then sell the hens later. The average Noiler hen has a breeding cycle of 120-150 eggs, considerably more than the native chicken which has 30-40 eggs per breeding cycle. They can later be sold for about N5000 (US$11) each, or more if it’s a festive season. Each woman is expected to make about 30% profit, from which half may be reinvested into another batch, and the remainder spent on her needs.
Rural smallholder farmers with their Noiler birds * Credit: Amo Farm Sieberer Hatchery
Amo Farms is part of the process, from the onset until the mature birds are sold to the end consumer. Its Farmer Satisfaction Representatives (FSR) visit the rural communities, interact with community leaders, and educate the communities on diet and nutrition, especially egg consumption. As Dr. Oduntan says “You don’t only eat to get full, but you eat for a balanced diet so your children will not be stunted.” The FSRs also help with sourcing MUs and facilitate the sale of the 5-week-old chickens to smallholder farmers. However, they do not control who are the end consumers, and Noilers are often sold to urban customers who pay more. When I mentioned to Dr. Oduntan that I had been sold two Noilers a couple of Christmases ago, reared by a male city resident in my city of Benin, he was not very pleased. He said, “We have to sustain the original business model so that even if the Noiler ends up in the city it will still have empowered the rural women.”
The Noiler bird is currently distributed in all the geographical zones of Nigeria, as well as the neighboring countries of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cameroun, and Burkina Faso. In many Nigerian states, such as Edo and Ogun, Noiler distribution has been adopted in targeted rural areas as part of female empowerment and anti-poverty initiatives. Recently Amo Farms went into partnership with Heifer International, an international NGO working to end world poverty. Under this partnership, the company is building a 10,000-birds-a-day processing plant in Obayantor, a small rural community in Edo State. According to the governor, Godwin Obaseki: “[Amo Farms] will hatch day-old chicks that farmers will buy, they will support them with feeds and other veterinary products…And once they have grown to 1.8 kg to 2 kg, they will buy back from the farmers and process in their abattoir…Farmers no longer have to wait for Christmas or Easter to sell their chickens because there is already an existing off-taker they can sell to all year-round.”
According to Amo Farms, “agriculture is the backbone for economic growth in any developing country. We want to create a revolution in rural poultry that will increase productivity and income for rural women and empower them to transform access of poor households to source animal protein in Africa.” There are currently 6,300 MUs all over Nigeria and over 1,200,000 smallholder farmers have raised the birds to maturity. These are encouraging numbers, but Dr. Oduntan is far from satisfied. He wants to start a Noiler movement where Noilers can be found in 2.5 million rural backyards in at least 20 African countries by 2025, providing income and nourishment.
About the Author:
Yinka Omorogbe is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, a lawyer and an academic specializing in energy law. As a 2021 Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow she researched pathways to create bankable eco-communities through energy independence. Ms. Omorogbe is currently the founder and CEO of EtinPower, a start-up company which provides solar mini-grid electricity to vulnerable populations in Nigeria. Previously in her long career, she has held various government, corporate, and academic positions, including Attorney-General, Edo State; Corporation Secretary and Legal Adviser to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation; and first female Professor and first female Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Ibadan.