commercialing the value chain : the example of Devenish

One of the most fascinating project i came across during my Uganda field trip, is the so- called Devenish project.

It is a project supported by Irish aid, and though no one we meet knew what Devenish stands for, Devenish is an Irish animal feed producer, that is present in several African countries but not yet Uganda.

The place we visited is a pig model farm, which is very well developed. I was impressed by the high level hygiene rules.

The model farm is actually i breeding farm, that just got a knew pig breed from Farmer's choice, a company in Kenya.

They have the pigs in different breeding units, and a breeding cycle is between 7-8 month.

When we visited about the farm just got the improved breeds and was function at about 1/4th of its capacity. However, the farm was extremely well organized and had all procedures well noted down in each unit.

They are producing there own feed, following an own formula mainly from local products. The project is also building a feed mills next door in order to produce local commercial feed.

The major output now is selling piglets from the new breed to local farmer.

the construction of the new mill 

The farm is currently run by 3 employees of which the only women is the responsible and a vet. I tried to investigate the ownership structure behind the project, but nobody really seemed to know. It seems that at the end of the project, the model farm should be run by the farmer cooperative to which farmer John belongs to.
Clearly, the only missing part of the value chain is the slaughter house, which is now in discussion at Irish aid.

Will that transfer to the cooperative work? who will be the winners and the looser of this project? how will it link up with rest of the value chain? I really want to go back in 5 years and see how this project will evolve.