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Wageningen helps Bill Gates with ‘picking’ chicken

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June 17, 2016

How much does a chicken cost in West-Africa: 5 dollar cents, 50 cents, 5 dollar or 50 dollar? The right answer is 5 dollar, says multibillionaire Bill Gates on his weblog. If you sell 250 chicken in a year, you can make 1250 dollar. This is a great prospect for people living in an area where the poverty line is at 700 dollars.

Last month Bill Gates promised to donate 100.000 chicken in 24 developing countries in the battle against poverty. But the variety in chicken breeds from several countries is enormous – how to decide which ones to choose? Wageningen University helps to make this decision. The Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre in Wageningen is now a partner in the African Chicken Genetic Gains program, a large program coordinated by the international livestock research institute (ILRI) which is financially supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The ACGG program is active in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania and aims to provide better chickens to smallholder famers in Africa.