MARKETING
The forgotten continent. Patterns and dynamics of the African egg industry Part 1 – Laying hen inventory and egg production
Analyses, dealing with the development and patterns of the global egg industry, in most cases focus on Europe, North America and Eastern Asia. With the exception of a few countries, Africa and Oceania are not in the centre of scientific research. In two papers, the obvious gap will be filled. The first paper will deal with the laying hen inventories and egg production, the second will document the patterns in the five African sub regions. together with Central and South America had almost the same population as Africa, but shared 22.7% in global egg production.
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Considerable differences in the dynamics of the laying hen inventories
The imbalance between the continents
Hans-Wilhelm Windhorst The author is scientific director of the WING at the Hannover Veterinary University and Prof. emeritus of the University of Vechta, Germany
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Table 1 documents the imbalance between the share of the continents in the global population, the laying hen inventories and in egg production. Asia was the dominating continent; it shared almost 60% in the global population and contributed about 60% to the global egg production in 2018. In contrast, Africa shared 16.7% in the global population but contributed only 4.2% to the global egg production volume. Europe
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Between 2008 and 2018, the laying hen inventory in Africa increased from 455.1 mill. to 518.2 mill. heads or by 18.9%. The relative growth rate was not much lower than that at the global level with 19.4%. A closer look at the situation at country level reveals, however, considerable differences. In the ten leading countries, as documented in Table 2, the inventories grew by only 11.1% because of a considerable decline of the inventories in Nigeria and South Africa. In the other eight countries, the number of laying hens increased between 18.9% (Kenya) and 96.1% (Morocco). The highest absolute growth in the laying hen inventory in the analysed decade showed Morocco with 32.2 mill. hens, followed by Egypt with 5.7 mill. heads and Tunisia with 5.1 mill. heads. Nigeria’s layer flock decreased by 20.6 mill. heads or 16.2%, South Africa’s inventory by 7.4 mill. or 10.9%. Avian Influenza outbreaks hit both countries (OIE 2017) and caused the drastic decline of the inventories. In addition to the
