Ethiopia’s Feathered Economy: How Women’s Backyard Chickens Underpin Rural Livelihoods and Reveal a Hidden Economic Truth

The Unseen Economic Engine

By Kilimokwanza.org Reporter

In a small village in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), a woman named Abeba begins her day not in the fields, but in her own backyard. Her focus is on a small, bustling flock of indigenous chickens, birds that scavenge for their food around her home. Her daily routine involves a careful calculus of resources and needs: ensuring the chickens have water, collecting the few precious eggs they lay, and deciding whether the family can afford to consume one or if it must be sold. Today, her youngest child has a fever. Without hesitation, she selects a healthy hen. The walk to the local market is long, but the sale will provide enough cash to buy medicine and perhaps some essential cooking oil. For Abeba’s household, this small transaction is not incidental; it is a lifeline.  

This scene, repeated in millions of households across Ethiopia, represents a vast and vital economic system that operates largely in the shadows of official statistics. A recent analysis targeting women poultry producers concluded that if this sector were to disappear, the country’s poorest households would suffer an immediate income loss of between 2% and 10% of their annual baseline income. Village-level interviews suggest the impact could be even more severe, with potential losses reaching 12% to 15%. This places the contribution of poultry at well over 10% of total income for these vulnerable families. Yet, this reality is often missed by broader household economy surveys, which may underestimate poultry’s contribution due to a systemic gender bias in how economic activity is measured and recorded.

This report delves into the heart of Ethiopia’s poultry sector to uncover the true scale and significance of this women-led economy. It begins by quantifying a national asset that is simultaneously massive in its aggregate scale and microscopic at the individual level. It then explores the deeply gendered nature of this work, examining the evidence that women’s crucial economic contributions are systematically undervalued and undercounted, leading to a critical failure in policy and investment. The report will diagnose the severe and interconnected threats—disease, feed costs, and predation—that place this entire system on a precarious edge. Finally, it will map the comprehensive response from the Ethiopian government, international partners, and non-governmental organizations, all of whom are working to secure this feathered economy, recognizing that in the daily work of women like Abeba lies a powerful, if hidden, key to national resilience and prosperity.

Section 1: The Scale of a Small Flock: Quantifying a National Asset

To understand the poultry sector in Ethiopia is to grapple with a fundamental paradox: it is an economic giant built from millions of microscopic parts. The aggregation of countless small, household-level operations constitutes a significant national resource, forming the bedrock of rural livelihoods and holding immense, yet largely untapped, potential for future growth.

Ethiopia’s Poultry Landscape

Ethiopia is home to one of Africa’s largest livestock populations, and within this, poultry represents a colossal resource. The national flock is estimated to be between 57 and 60 million birds, a figure that underscores its sheer scale. However, the structure of this population is what truly defines its character. The sector is overwhelmingly dominated by traditional, “village” or “backyard” production systems. These extensive, low-input operations account for more than 95% of all poultry in the country and are responsible for over 98% of the total meat and egg production. This system is characterized by small flocks of indigenous breeds that scavenge for the majority of their food, with minimal inputs for housing, healthcare, or supplementary feed.  

The practice is deeply woven into the fabric of rural life. Approximately 56% of all Ethiopian households keep poultry, making it a near-ubiquitous feature of the agricultural landscape. Yet, for the vast majority, the scale of operation is incredibly small. About 80% of these households manage flocks of just one to nine chickens. This fragmentation means the nation’s massive poultry resource is distributed across millions of independent, family-run micro-enterprises. While commercial operations exist, they represent a tiny fraction of the whole; only 3% of farms are considered intensive, with another 8% classified as semi-intensive. The backbone of the sector is, and remains, the village chicken.  

Economic and Nutritional Contribution

Despite its low-input nature, the economic and social importance of this sector cannot be overstated. It is consistently identified as a key livestock subsector, vital for generating employment, creating income for farmers, and contributing to national food security. Its accessibility makes it a particularly suitable enterprise for the most vulnerable. The low investment costs and minimal land requirements allow poor households, especially those with limited access to other resources, to participate in the livestock economy. For many, poultry keeping is the “backbone economy base,” a flexible asset that can be readily converted to cash to meet immediate needs, such as purchasing food, clothes for children, or paying for school fees.  

The sector’s growth is being propelled by powerful demographic and economic forces, including a rising population, increasing urbanization, and shifting dietary preferences toward animal-source foods. Yet, this growing demand starkly contrasts with the country’s current consumption levels, which are among the lowest in the world. On average, an Ethiopian consumes just 2.85 kg of chicken meat and 57 eggs per year, figures well below the average for other African nations. This significant gap between potential demand and current supply highlights a massive, untapped domestic market. If the constraints on production can be overcome, the poultry sector is poised not only to continue its role in poverty alleviation but also to become a significant engine for broader economic growth. The primary barrier is not a lack of demand, but the structural inability of the current low-productivity system to meet this inevitable future need.  

The SNNPR Context

The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR), the geographic focus of the initial research prompt, is a critical hub for poultry production. It stands alongside the Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray regions as having one of the highest poultry populations and densities in the country. This concentration validates its importance as a case study for understanding the dynamics of the village poultry system. Specialized analytical frameworks, such as the Livelihood Zone maps and baselines developed by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), provide a granular understanding of how poultry rearing is integrated into the diverse local economies of the SNNPR. These frameworks detail numerous distinct zones within the region, such as the “Amaro Coffee and Enset” zone or the “Wolayita Maize and Root Crop” zone, each with unique patterns of food and income generation where poultry plays a specific, vital role. This context is essential for designing targeted and effective development interventions.  This structure—a massive national flock composed of millions of tiny, vulnerable, low-input units—presents a profound challenge for policymakers. Conventional, top-down agricultural policies designed for large, consolidated farms are ill-suited to this reality. The logistical complexity of delivering veterinary services, improved feed, or training to millions of households, each with only a handful of birds, is immense. This helps explain why, despite its recognized importance, the village poultry sector has remained largely unimproved and continues to be defined by its low-input, high-risk nature. The challenge is not a scarcity of birds, but the immense difficulty of reaching them.

Ethiopia’s poultry population stands at approximately 57 to 60 million birds, with over 95% raised in village or backyard systems—mostly by smallholder households. Semi-intensive systems account for about 8%, while intensive commercial operations make up only around 3%. The overwhelming majority of birds—between 78% and 97%—are indigenous breeds, with hybrid or exotic breeds comprising just 3% to 21%. Poultry keeping is widespread, involving an estimated 56% of all Ethiopian households, and for 80% of those, flock sizes are modest, typically ranging from just 1 to 9 chickens. Despite their small scale, these village flocks are the backbone of national production, supplying over 98% of the country’s meat and eggs. On a per capita basis, Ethiopians consume about 2.85 kilograms of poultry meat and 57 eggs annually—figures that underscore both the sector’s importance and the vast room for improvement in productivity and access.

Section 2: A Woman’s Work: Gender, Poultry, and the Data Gap

The vast, fragmented poultry economy of Ethiopia is not just a system of small flocks; it is fundamentally a women’s economy. Women are the primary actors, managers, and beneficiaries of village poultry production, wielding it as a critical tool for household resilience and economic agency. However, this reality is often obscured by a persistent gender data gap, which renders their contributions “invisible” in official statistics and leads to a systemic underestimation of the sector’s true economic weight.

The Gendered Nature of Village Poultry

Across rural Ethiopia, poultry rearing is overwhelmingly considered women’s work. This cultural norm is reflected in the division of labor, where women perform the vast majority of tasks related to flock management. A detailed study found that women’s participation is dominant in nearly every aspect of poultry production, with house construction being the only activity where men’s involvement is greater. Specifically, women are almost solely responsible for providing water and collecting eggs (an activity performed by 86.7% of women), cleaning poultry housing and recording key events like hatching (80%), and purchasing feed (73.3%).  

Crucially, women’s control extends beyond labor into the economic sphere. In over 73% of households, women are the ones who take poultry products to market, conduct the sales, and hold the money from those transactions. This gives them direct control over a key source of household income, a rare and powerful position in many patriarchal rural societies. As such, poultry is one of the few productive assets that women can independently own and manage, providing them with a tangible source of economic empowerment and a stronger voice in household decision-making.  

The impact of this female-controlled income is profound. Research shows that women reinvest a much higher proportion of their earnings into family welfare compared to men—up to 90% of income controlled by women is channeled back into household or community needs, versus only 30-40% of income controlled by men. In the context of poultry, this means the money earned from selling eggs or a chicken is disproportionately used to improve child nutrition, pay for school fees, and cover healthcare costs, creating a virtuous cycle of human capital development. This dynamic makes supporting women’s poultry enterprises one of the most direct and efficient levers for improving broader development outcomes. Every dollar invested in this sector has a multiplier effect on family well-being that is two to three times greater than a dollar invested in a male-dominated agricultural activity.