Vaccines save Central African chickens from a deadly season
In Central African Republic, it’s mango season from February through June, when more fruits than can be picked ripen and often fall from the trees.
But this bounty all too often spells disaster for poultry farmers, whose flocks get sick from the fallen fruit. That’s changing with a vaccination campaign backed by the International Trade Centre (ITC).
In rich countries, free range chickens are a higher-end product, allowed to roam outside of the cages where they’d often be confined on higher-volume farms.
But in Central African Republic, most chickens are free range, which makes it hard for farmers to control everything they eat. Like people, poultry also love a ripe mango, and peck away at them when they fall to the ground.
The problem is that fruit flies also love sweet mangoes, which provide them an ideal breeding environment. They lay their larvae in the fruit. Unfortunately for the chickens, those larvae are toxic.
When chickens eat too many of the larvae, they get sick with digestive problems that lead to other infections. Thousands of birds die this way every mango season – a disaster for farmers in one of the world’s least developed countries.
But there is a solution. A widely available vaccine protects chickens again the diseases spread by fruit flies. Cheap by global standards, it’s expensive for small farmers in the Central African Republic, who may not even know that the vaccine exists.
ITC, through an EU-funded programme called PAPEUR Rural, provided farmers with the vaccine in December 2024, by working with the National Agency for Rural Development – known by its French acronym ANDE.
‘Thanks to the vaccination, my chickens survived the diseases that usually kill them at the start of the mango season,’ said Florence, who farms in the town of Gbélé.
For several years, PAPEUR Rural has worked with the communities of Gbélé and Samba, near the capital Bangui, providing seed and other supplies. The vaccination campaign is the next step in that support.
‘With the support of the International Trade Centre, ANDE has successfully vaccinated over 500 poultry to prevent diseases that frequently devastate poultry in our towns and villages. The results have been very promising,’ said Dr. Ousmane Gamarko Sossal, Director General of ANDE.
Vaccines bring immediate results
Farmers say the results were almost immediate.
Zénaba Daff is president of the Samba Poultry Cooperative, and lives about 15 kilometers from Bangui.
‘My poultry losses have stopped. Between January and early February, I lost 16 chickens, but now, thanks to this vaccination, there have been no further losses,’ Daff said.
Natacha, a poultry farmer in her fifties, lives nearby and said her flock is now thriving.
‘I have been in poultry farming for several years, but since I started receiving support from the programme, I have mastered the different farming stages thanks to training on various production techniques,’ she said. ‘Today, I have 139 chickens compared to fewer than 50 a few months ago. My chickens are growing well thanks to the guidance I received from the PAPEUR Rural training.’
PAPEUR Rural’s work with poultry farmers helps them strengthen their businesses, so that they can keep thriving on their own.
