The lean season in northern Ghana brings special challenges for the small livestock producer. Feed is scarce, commercial feed and supplements prohibitively expensive and undernourished animals don’t achieve the necessary value at market.
With her whole family reliant on income from livestock production, Mrs Sadia Issifu from the Gbani Community realised she could produce a feed supplement from locally available plants, herbs, and crops. Using pods from Piliostigma reticulata, known in the local Mamprusi language as Ba-ama Biiri, which are readily available and abundant throughout the local area. Much from the Ba-ama biiri is already used for human consumption but the pods were simply discarded as waste.
Combining the ground-up pods with other by-products available at low or no cost, Sadia has been able to develop a feed supplement which keeps her animals thriving and healthy and markets her product to other smallholders.
Supported by CEAL , experts from DADU (Mamprusi West Municipal Department of Agriculture Development Unit), the Animal Research institute and other development workers have collaborated with Sadia to further improve her innovation.
The final product has now been researched and its effects monitored with a scientific review. As a result, Sadia’s product is now fully developed, standardised, and commercialised in the Northeast Region of Ghana making livestock income far more sustainable and family livelihoods less precarious.
For more information on the work of CEAL, see: https://bit.ly/3DzSOFn
