article · Animal Bioscience
Pig production represents an expanding livestock sector in Africa, where the pig population accounts for 4.6 percent of the global total. While traditional systems run by smallholder farmers with indigenous breeds remain predominant, annual pork production grew from under one million tonnes in 2000 to more than two million tonnes in 2021. The sector faces major hurdles, notably African swine fever, high ambient temperatures, limited access to high-quality breeds, high feed and veterinary input costs, and inadequate processing infrastructure. Meeting the food needs of Africa's projected 2.5 billion population by 2050 will require transforming current operations. Advancing the industry requires developmental research, enhanced animal health measures, local feed manufacturing, improved housing, and supportive policies to expand domestic productivity and enable future export potential.
With Africa's population projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 alongside rising urbanisation, sustainable animal protein sources are vital for food security. Smallholder pig farming underpins rural livelihoods and local economies. Overcoming recurring animal disease outbreaks, high input costs, and processing bottlenecks is critical to transitioning traditional production into high-yielding, resilient agricultural systems that can feed growing cities.
Opportunities exist across commercial feed manufacturing, veterinary inputs, climate-resilient animal housing, and meat processing facilities. Prospective users include smallholder farmers, commercial livestock enterprises, and agricultural processors. Because this work is an overarching sectoral review rather than an evaluation of a single technology, the identified solutions range from early-stage developmental research to established agricultural inputs and processing methods requiring adaptation and scaling within regional value chains.
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Pig production is one of the viable enterprises of the livestock sub-sector of agriculture. It contributes significantly to the economy and animal protein supply to enhance food security in Africa and globally. This article explored the present status of pig production in Africa, the challenges, prospects and potentials. The pig population of Africa represents 4.6% of the global pig population. They are widely distributed across Africa except in Northern Africa where pig production is not popular due to religio-cultural reasons. They are mostly reared in rural parts of Africa by smallholder farmers, informing why majority of the pig population in most parts of Africa are indigenous breeds and their crosses. Pig plays important roles in the sustenance of livelihood in the rural communities and have cultural and social significance. The pig production system in Africa is predominantly traditional, but rapidly growing and transforming into the modern system. The annual pork production in Africa has grown from less than a million tonnes in year 2000 to over 2 million tonnes in 2021. Incidence of disease outbreak, especially African swine fever is one of the main constraints affecting pig production in Africa. Others are lack of skills and technical know-how, high ambient temperature, limited access to high-quality breeds, high cost of feed ingredients and veterinary inputs, unfriendly government policies, religious and cultural bias, inadequate processing facilities as well as under-developed value-chain. The projected human population of 2.5 billion in Africa by 2050, increasing urbanization and decreasing farming population are pointers to the need for increased food production. The production systems of pigs in Africa requires developmental research, improvements in housing, feed production and manufacturing, animal health, processing, capacity building and pig friendly policies for improved productivity and facilitation of export.
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DOI: 10.5713/ab.23.0342
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