Poultry Markets in West Africa: Ghana

EPAR Research Brief #83

Fri, 05/28/2010

Authors:

Katherine Killebrew

Robert Plotnick

Mary Kay Gugerty

Abstract:

This report provides an overview of poultry market trends in Ghana as compared to the wider West African region. The primary source for this analysis is the 2006 FAO-Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases (ECTAD) poultry sector review. We find that poultry production in Ghana takes place in rural areas throughout the country and in commercial operations near urban centers. However, many domestic producers have been unable to compete with frozen poultry imports, resulting in stagnant domestic per capita production and underutilization of production facilities. The country’s coastal ports provide an entry point for poultry imports, which may explain why imports have dominated the country’s market more than in land-locked countries such as Burkina Faso. Opportunities for poultry development in Ghana include expanding the role of domestic producers in supplying geographic and product niches.

EPAR’s Poultry Markets in West Africa series provides an overview of poultry market trends across West Africa and compares the opportunities for poultry sector development in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The accompanying briefs in this series provide country-specific detailed poultry market analyses. The primary resources for these analyses included many reports prepared in response to the Avian Influenza epidemic, which may explain some of the emphasis on the importance of biosecurity in the available literature. We find that the West African poultry sector faces high production costs, safety concerns due to lack of sanitary controls, and technical constraints in processing and marketing. In addition to biological issues, the lack of breeders, marketing, and processing technology present technical constraints to poultry sector growth.

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