Otokunor Rejects Claims That Nkokonkitinkiti Poultry Policy Has Failed

Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor, Director of Presidential Initiatives in Agriculture and Agribusiness, has dismissed suggestions that the government's Nkokonkitinkiti poultry policy has been a failure.

Appearing on Channel One TV's Face to Face programme with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Tuesday, November 10, Dr Otokunor maintained that the scheme remained on course to achieve what it set out to do, as first reported by Citi News.

"No, it has not failed. It's a very defective assertion if anybody should know," he said.

The policy is one strand of President John Dramani Mahama's wider Poultry Farm to the Table initiative, which he said aims to revive the country's poultry sector through two production models: one for households and one for commercial farms.

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Under the household model, families are supported to keep birds in their backyards. According to Dr Otokunor, the aim is to give them an additional source of income and better access to poultry products.

The commercial model involves supplying established poultry farms with chicks, feed and medication so they can scale up output.

Dr Otokunor said the government was taking an integrated approach to building the industry, including investing in processing facilities so that higher production leads to value addition and jobs.

"When you are growing the poultry industry, and you don't do it in an integrated manner where industry value addition can be done, processing can be done, then you would be joking," he said.

He pointed to the construction of the Bechem Poultry Processing Plant as one of the steps being taken to boost the sector's processing capacity.

The overall goal, he explained, is to raise local poultry output and cut the roughly $500 million Ghana is estimated to spend each year on imported poultry.

He added that processing plants would allow domestic producers to keep up with shifting consumer tastes, noting that buyers increasingly want specific parts such as wings, feet, thighs and breasts rather than only whole birds.

Dr Otokunor also said the household component was meant to give beneficiaries the skills and experience needed to grow into small- and medium-scale poultry enterprises.

He explained that participants could sell some of their birds, put the money back into their operations and expand over time.

"And so we are looking for people who are able to transform this intervention into businesses that will create jobs for other people to work with them," he said.