Empowering Impoverished Communities

Creating Sustainable Economic Opportunities Through Poultry Production in Kauma Village, Kasungu District

Umodzi Poultry

Umodzi Poultry is a social enterprise founded in 2018 with a mission to empower impoverished communities through sustainable economic opportunities.

Umodzi Poultry is a social enterprise dedicated to empowering impoverished communities through sustainable economic opportunities. Founded in 2018 Umodzi works with the Mthetsankhuli Women Cooperative in Kauma Village, Kasungu district, Umodzi Poultry provides critical infrastructure and inputs for quail production. Our operations are supported by a 25 Kw solar power system, which runs incubators and provides lighting, and a biogas bio digester, which supplies heating for brooding.

About Umodzi

Umodzi was founded by Malawian-American, Mathews Tisatayane who has a Master’s in development Engineering from Berkeley University
Mathews is founder and president of Umodzi Poultry, based in Central Malawi’s Kauma Village. Umodzi Poultry is a solar-powered social enterprise doing biological integrative farming in conjunction with the 12-person Mthetsankhuli women’s cooperative in Kauma Village. It uses solar power to draw water from a well, which is used for human and animal consumption as well as to irrigate crops that are also used to feed humans and animals. This clean energy–grown food — combined with solar-powered egg incubators — produces poultry for the local community — poultry whose droppings further fertilize the crops. It’s an entirely circular system, with 100-percent clean, renewable inputs and outputs that go right back into the system. Umodzi’s model also provides a much-needed source of healthy protein for the surrounding community.

Umodzi implements its three “BIG” components of nature, with B for Birds: It started off raising Japanese quail and has now added local chickens and ducks. I is for Insects: The larvae of black soldier flies and termites provide a sustainable source of protein for its birds, and bees produce honey and help pollinate the crops that also feed the birds. And G is for Gardening: Umodzi grows native sweet potatoes, millets, cow peas, sunflowers, groundnuts, and more — fertilized naturally by bird poop and biodigester technology, as opposed to harmful synthetic fertilizers. The enterprise mimics central Malawi’s natural environment and its ancient symbioses.
Umodzi also employs members of the community. In less than a year, it grew to 25 full-time workers and hundreds of occasional workers and is the only employer within at least five miles of its 55-acre farm. The Mthetsankhuli women’s cooperative, which works particularly with caring for the birds, gets 10% of the total sales in return for their labor. In total, some 1500 people — including the cooperative’s women and their families, all the full-time and contract workers and their families, and newly contracted farmers nearby — are supported by Umodzi, which produces 500 quails per week and generates some £550 of sales per week from local trading centers. In total, 80% of its beneficiaries are women and youths in rural areas where formal employment is almost nonexistent.

Umodzi’s plan for scaling up includes fully utilizing its infrastructure — which can support 5,000 quail per week and 20,000 eggs in its incubators — and selling 22,000 quail a week to hotels, supermarkets, and restaurants in big cities, including the capital, Lilongwe. The company is already engaging with 1,000 women and youth within 20 kilometers of Kauma Village to work in trained, 10-person groups to raise young quail in six-week cycles to sell back to Umodzi, earning income for both the groups and Umodzi.
Mathews’ contribution is not only the growing number of poor people whose livelihoods, nutritions, and environments have been improved, but the introduction of a self-sustaining, circular system of agriculture and poverty alleviation that can be widely implemented and adapted to any local environment.