The poultry sub-sector in Ethiopia is still at infant stage and dominated by indigenous breeds with traditional husbandry and poor management practices, most of agricultural households are engaged in small scale poultry production where the survival of baby chicks is quite low due to high risk of predators and infectious disease.
With regard to commercial poultry farms different breeds are already introduced in the country by different level (small-large scale) private farms that are still too small as compared with the average performance of developing countries but the progress is quite encouraging from time to time using the existing conducive environment in placed for private investment. However, most of them concentrated in major cities like Addis Ababa, Adama and the surrounding areas. In addition large scale poultry production is also practiced by the government in different part of the country with the aim of providing dual purpose chickens of exotic breeds. Moreover, Ethiopian higher education and research institutions run a number of modern poultry farms with the objective of training and research.
Following the growth of private involvement in the area, it appeared very crucial to formally organize interested entrepreneurs jointly to address their common challenges and get required support from the government to enhance the development of the subsector. Taking this into consideration 10 volunteer and visionary poultry producers initially established the Ethiopian Poultry Producers Association (EPPA) as membership-based association in 2010 in Bishoftu town. Since then its members have been increasing from time to time involving from small to big enterprises. EPPA is a pioneer association lacking a good service portfolio and institutional capacity to serve the Ethiopian Poultry sub-sector in general and its members in particular. Though the importance of the association is acknowledged by its members, non-members, board, government and other stakeholders who realized that EPPA needs advisory and financial supports to discharge its full responsibility and professionally represent the poultry producers at national level. Based on this to professionalize EPPA, Agriterra in partnership with Agribusiness Support Facility (ABSF) developed a funded Action Plan in 2014 towards strengthening and establishing the management function of the association through subsidizing management staff, setting up a governance structure, technical backstopping to help the association analyze and understand the poultry sub-sector, development of 3 year strategic plan, and various trainings and exchange visits. EPPA implemented the 2014 Action Plan very well and made significant improvements in its operations. EPPA has requested Agriterra and ABSF to continue their support in 2015. The 2015 Action Plan was mainly focused on increasing the membership base of small-scale poultry producers through continuous contact and approach of potential new members with an extra effort and making clear the anticipated significant benefits to all the members on equal basis. Since October 2015 the Association renamed as Ethiopian Poultry Producers and Processors Association (EPPPA) that has incorporated quite a reasonable number of poultry processors that widens the Mandate and Responsibilities of the Association to support the government initiative as clearly stipulated in the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)-II that gives emphasis to transform the poultry subsector for better production in terms of quality and quantity. Currently the members have reached to 48 and until the end of 2016 the Association will exert maximum effort to raise this number at least by 50-60%.