By Yero S. Bah
Mansa Banko Online on June 1, 2020, had an exclusive interview with the founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Peace Poultry Farm, Mr. Yusupha Manneh from Jinack Kajata village in Lower Niumi District. He talked on wide range of issues with regards to the poultry business and his passion for poultry farming.
Manneh, commonly called Peace Manneh is an entrepreneur-cum-teacher at Jinack Upper and Senior Secondary Schools in Niumi, North Bank Region.
The Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) Mini Grant Scheme beneficiary indicated that, his experience as a poultry farmer is amazing and challenging. While noting that the industry has lots of opportunities, Manneh was quick to point out that, exploring such opportunities comes with a lot of challenges; that one of the biggest challenges they are facing in their type of business is competing with importers of poultry meat and eggs, which are often sold at cheaper prices than the locally produced ones.
Jinack Kajata poultry farmer admitted that it’s difficult [for their products] to compete with imported poultry products due to the high cost of feed, medicine and day-old chicks– most of which are also imported. He added, “This makes our cost of production to be extremely higher than normal.”
The Peace Poultry Farm chief reasoned that he went into poultry farming because of the opportunities he saw in the industry; and he’s passionate about creating opportunities for others, describing himself as a believer in the philosophy that ‘until you can feed yourself from what you grow, you are not yet independent’. Hence, the poultry industry has the potential to make us realize Gambia’s food self-sufficiency drive, the young farmer opined, and added that he decided to be a player.
The entrepreneur went on to highlight some of the specific challenges of the poultry industry in the Gambia, citing the biggest challenges as high cost of production due to importation of almost all their inputs; high mortality rate often encountered due the long distance and the harsh conditions day-old chicks have to endure on their journey from Senegal to Gambia; lack of access to processing and storage facilities making it difficult to minimize cost; as well as the temporary shortages of vaccines which could lead to high mortality in some cases.
But despite those challenges, CEO Manneh held that poultry is one of the most scalable businesses in the Gambia; it has the potential to scale-up quickly notwithstanding the challenges and risks involved. He maintained that if the government could help address some of the problems the farmers are facing right now, “we will soon realize a great boom in our economy”.
The HTC college graduate laments that, the coronavirus restrictions has greatly affected their business, in that “our sales significantly dropped and we always have problem when it comes to delivery during this period”.
He recalled a point in time when there was no vaccine; that even antibiotics were not available in the country; it was “really difficult to minimize mortality” in such trying moments.
Meanwhile, the Poultry farm CEO has proffered some possible solutions to the challenges poultry farmers in the country are faced with, as he underlined that they need a united front of all stakeholders in the industry to address the challenges. Also, he recommended that government should establish functional feed mills and provide maize to farmers with high quality seeds and facilitate a partnership between maize growers and feed mills.
He intimated that a functional hatchery in the country would also significantly address the challenges facing the industry, adding this would play a significant role in reducing the cost of feed as maize constitutes the major component of the feed.
The teacher-cum-poultry farmer also wants the government to place a quota on imported poultry products.
Manneh is also into youth activism as he works with different youth organizations in the country, such as Youth Movement for Employment and Violence-Free Africa (YoMEVA)
