Rising demand for frozen chicken and associated lucrative returns are luring many youth in Zanzibar to venture into distribution of frozen poultry, one of the isle's leading businesses.
"The sale of high quality poultry products has boosted the livelihood of many young men and women on Zanzibar and Pemba isles," says 31 year old Zanzibari resident and poultry farmer, Rashid Mohamed.
Mohamed has for past three years, engaged in selling frozen chicken obtained from the Zanzibar open market.
“I used to buy one 20 kilogram box of chicken…now only three years later I buy up to 40 boxes that are all sold out every day,” he explains.
Consequently, he has opened five shops at Mwanakwerekwe, Kibweni, Miembeni, Darajani and Mbweni. In each of the outlets, he has employed at least two employees, creating job opportunities for the numerous unemployed youth.
“I had to pay school fees and hospital bills for my children…now my children are all in private english medium schools…my whole family leads a much better lifestyle," says the poultry farmer.
Like, Mohamed, many other youth in Zanzibar have taken to the frozen poultry business either as wholesalers or retailers.
The boom in sell of frozen chicken, is associated with the supplier ZanChick Company, whose Operations Manager Andre De Lange says the company offers direct and indirect employment to about 300 youth.
“We sell one kilogram packages for 4500/- and we also sell chicken spices like white and black pepper, Tandoori flavour and chicken masala,” he said.
Commenting on the impact of the ZanChick company on the Zanzibar community, the Director of ZanChick, Issa Kasim Issa, says the company has helped in poverty alleviation through provision of direct and indirect employment, such as entrepreneur distributors like Mohamed.
He revealed that as part of ZanChick’s expansion plans, the firm is in talks with the Zanzibar government on how to support poultry keepers in Zanzibar.
"Currently we import chicken from the United States, but our plan is to buy poultry from Zanzibar farmers," he explains citing the need for local farmers to feed their chicken better food such as corn and soya beans.
In order to achieve that goal, Kassim said they have started developing training programmes on better and healthier ways of poultry keeping.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
I did not to intervene this chicken import business from abroad anyway. But As Zanzibaris who live in USA I would like to draw attention to the consumers to pay attention with these chickens. Many Poultry farms these days use special hormones to make these chickens grow faster in order to rush for the available competing market around the globe. Some of the hormones used have some bad effects to people. I clearly understand that in Zanzibar we are not that much careful when it come to cheap price products. Ignoring the facts behind these foods imports like chicken may have big impact in our society. I would advice people to go for range chicken label when they buy these product or stick with tinge kwa tonge or kibua for better health.
ReplyDeleteHaji Raja Haji. Seattle Washington USA.
Range labeled chickens. Ni sawa na wa kienyeji wanaoishi kwa kuchekura na kubaka vipanzi. Au unawenza kusema kuku wa kienyeji. Organic.
ReplyDeleteHaji Rajab Haji.