Tyson Foods Helps Rwandan Villagers

Tyson Foods Inc. is working on a pilot project in Rwanda with Millennium Promise, a non-profit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty.

Tyson is providing technical experts to go to Rwanda to help women in five villages learn how to raise their own chickens.

The program aims to help the women earn an income from the sale of poultry eggs and meat and develop a school meals program to increase protein consumption among children.

Tyson became involved in the project last year when Director of Sustainability Jenise Huffman went to work for the organization on a nine-month corporate service fellowship.

“I came to realize Tyson could form a deeper relationship with Millennium Promise and play a role in its efforts to alleviate malnutrition among the children in these villages, while also giving the adults an opportunity to earn an income,” Huffman said.

If the pilot project is successful, it will be expanded to help people in other Millennium Villages in Africa, which currently include 80 villages across 10 counties in sub-Saharan Africa.

The CEO of the Millennium Project, John McArthur spoke at the University of Arkansas on Dec. 17 outlining other efforts to end poverty in Africa, specifically through increased use of fertilizers to rebuild nutrients in the soil.

He noted that just 4 percent of Africa is irrigated, and that it costs more to ship fertilizer 700 miles from Mombasa, Kenya, to Kampala, Uganda, than it does to ship it from Baltimore to Mombasa.

McArthur pointed to the case of Malawi, which has doubled food production and sustained the growth for three years running.

“It shows that any country can double its food production,” McArthur said.