Youth and women in Southern Africa need more than basic startup grants to succeed in poultry. Sacau CEO Ishmael Sunga outlines how targeted investments in blended finance, shared infrastructure, digital systems, and offtake contracts can bridge the gap between survivalist farming and commercial viability.
Southern Africa’s poultry industry is full of promise, but also full of imbalance. On one end, thousands of small producers struggle to survive from cycle to cycle. On the other end, large, integrated firms dominate feed, chicks, processing, logistics and formal markets. Between them lies the space where the future should be built: the missing middle.
This missing middle is not a slogan. It is the underdeveloped layer of professional, medium-scale poultry enterprises that should be supplying markets, creating jobs, aggregating smaller producers, investing in infrastructure and giving young people a real stake in the industry.
Without it, poultry will remain trapped between survivalist production and concentrated corporate control/dominance.
Bridging the gap between survivalism and corporate dominance
For too long, enterprise support has focused either on micro-projects that rarely scale, or on established firms already strong enough to attract finance and contracts. The entrepreneurs in between are often ignored. They are too advanced for basic start-up grants, but not yet bankable enough for commercial lenders.
They have ambition, some experience and market potential, but lack working capital, shared infrastructure, technical support, buyer confidence and the professional systems needed to grow.
That is the gap Southern Africa must now close deliberately. The poultry value chain is one of the most practical entry points for inclusive agribusiness. Demand is strong. Production cycles are short.
Opportunities go far beyond farming: feed distribution, hatcheries, veterinary services, housing construction, slaughtering, cold storage, transport, packaging, aggregation, branding and market distribution all offer room for youth- and women-led enterprise.
What professionalisation really takes
But this will not happen by accident. Young women and men cannot be told to “go into poultry” and then be left to face high feed costs, disease risks, weak infrastructure, informal markets and hostile finance conditions alone. If we want them to become serious players, we must build the conditions that allow them to behave like serious businesses.
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That means professionalisation. It means records, standards, biosecurity, business planning, cost control, quality assurance, contracts, digital tools and reliable delivery. It means training that leads to competence, mentorship that builds judgement, and finance that follows performance. It means off-take agreements, shared infrastructure and supplier-development programmes that open real markets rather than temporary project spaces.
The prize is enormous. A strong missing middle would create jobs closer to communities, broaden ownership, strengthen food security and pull smaller producers into more organised value chains. It would also give young people a different relationship with agriculture: not as beneficiaries of programmes, but as owners, employers, innovators and investors.
Building a new compact for youth and women-led enterprise
This is especially important for young women, who are already active in food trading, household nutrition and local distribution networks, but are too often kept at the lowest value end of the chain. With the right support, they can move from informal participation to formal enterprise ownership across production, services, processing and marketing.
Policy makers, financiers, retailers, processors, producer organisations and development partners must therefore change the question. The question is not simply how many young people can be introduced to poultry. The real question is how many can be helped to cross the bridge into viable medium-scale enterprise.
That requires a new compact: blended finance, enterprise clusters, shared hatcheries and cold rooms, practical certification, digital business systems, public procurement opportunities, private-sector off-take and patient mentorship. Above all, it requires treating the missing middle as a measure of transformation, not an afterthought.
Southern Africa does not need another generation of poultry projects that begin with enthusiasm and end in disappointment. It needs a generation of professional, medium-scale poultry enterprises that can compete, supply, employ and grow.
The choice is stark. Leave the missing middle empty, and the sector will continue to reproduce exclusion. Fill it deliberately, and poultry can become one of the most practical engines of youth entrepreneurship and employment creation, women’s economic empowerment and inclusive agribusiness growth.
Future-proofing poultry means future-proofing ownership. And that starts by building the missing middle.
- The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Food For Mzansi.
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