What we do
The Mdukatshani Rural Livestock Development Programme has 4 key programmes:
- Abafuyi Livestock Breeding, Feeding & Sales; creating sustainable incomes for rural primarily woman livestock owners
- Community Animal Health Workers (CAHW's); Community based veterinary practitioners, increasing productivity of herds through local veterinary advice and supplies of veterinary medicines and treatments.
- Rural Youth Abafuyi Programme – livestock schools education, and breeding young adult livestock farmers
- Education & Training Resources - veterinary handbooks – Zulu & English picture based veterinary guides, with step by step diagnosis and treatment advice. Please refer to our Resources page for more.
Abafuyi Livestock Breeding, Feeding & Sales
The programme improves livestock productivity of small farmers through innovative interventions which:
- Formalises and grows the marketing of goats & chickens through training, education and market development.
- Improve nutrition of goat mothers and kids leading to better productivity, less kids fatalities and more marketable higher value animals.
- Create microbusinesses to provide innovative feed products such as using milled acacia thorn scrub as hay, using brick machines to produce feeding blocks of with key nutrients. These feed products are then sold to local farmers at reasonable prices enhancing the local circular economy.
- Improve health through treatment and vaccination by the associated Community Animal Health Workers Programme
- Link buyers and sellers through the setting up and publicity of regular market auction days close to farmers homes. In any sales livestock values and payments are facilitated by Mdukatshani ensuring best prices to small farmers.
To date the Abafuyi programme has generated R 250 million in sales of goats and tens of thousands of rands in chicken sales benefitting 4 000 farmers of which 60% are women
The Community Animal Health Worker Project (CAHW’s)
Our Community Animal Health Worker Project (CAHW) empowers local youth by creating small businesses that support small-scale farmers. Through this project, trained CAHWs, equipped with veterinary products, provide essential health interventions for local goat herds. Each CAHW is skilled in diagnosing, dispensing, and treating common ailments, while also educating primarily women farmers on effective animal care and prevention strategies. They carry a graphic veterinary guide and operate with a small solar-powered fridge to store medicines. For just R10 per treatment, CAHWs offer affordable healthcare services to small farmers, generating sustainable income for themselves. This vital initiative spans across cattle, goats, and chickens, forming a cornerstone of our broader livestock health program. To date 500 CAHWs have been trained and equipped in 8 districts in South Africa. They have dispensed more than 20 000 treatments of various kinds. In a country with no public veterinary resources in the formal or informal agricultural sector, this is an extraordinary and hugely impactful intervention.
Rural Youth Abafuyi Programme
Our Youth Abafuyi initiative fosters animal health awareness through school-based clubs, bridging knowledge between parents and children. These clubs, now active in Grade 5 and Grade 6 across various primary schools in our program areas, empower students with hands-on experience in goat handling alongside their studies. Participants use comprehensive handbooks filled with photographs, lessons, and translations, supplemented by a teacher's guide, ensuring an engaging and educational experience. Through this dynamic approach, we cultivate future generations of informed and skilled animal health advocates. Over 1500 youth have been trained in nine schools in grades 5 & 6, 200 teachers have been equipped with resources and 1000 schools training manuals distributed.