Chicken feeds the nation. Poultry producers provide twice as much meat as the beef industry, and four times that of pork producers. The result is that 66% of the meat consumed in SA is chicken.
South Africa’s lacklustre economic growth over many years now underscores the importance of industries that provide jobs and support economic activity, particularly in impoverished rural areas. High on this list is the poultry industry, whose contribution to the national economy and to the country’s food security is massive, but often underappreciated. Chicken feeds the nation, as the industry regularly reminds us.
Despite government infrastructure failings and the ever-present threat of bird flu, the poultry industry is thriving. It has recovered from the devastating bird flu outbreaks of 2023 and boosted production by 4.4% in 2024. For the first three-quarters of 2025, growth continued to exceed 4%.
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Poultry kept the wolf from the national food security door, even during Covid-19, when imports of chicken stalled. This is in stark contrast to the performance of the national economy, which grew by 0.5% in 2024 and an estimated 1.3% last year. The International Monetary Fund has just announced that it expects SA’s economic growth for 2026 to reach 1.4%, less than half of the expected global growth rate of 3.3%.
Meagre growth means increasing millions of jobless people, as the economy will not be able either to absorb new entrants to the labour market, or to provide sufficient new jobs to make a meaningful reduction in one of the world’s highest unemployment rates. SA’s population rose to an estimated 63 million people last year, of whom 31.9%, or 8.1 million people, were unemployed in the third quarter of 2025. The expanded unemployment rate, which includes those who have stopped looking for work, stands at 42%.
SA is a country where nearly half the people of working age are without a job, or the income to sustain a family. This is why the poultry industry is so important. It is a huge R72-billion national asset.
Not only does it supply most of the meat protein the nation consumes, but chicken is produced in rural areas, providing jobs and sustaining economies far from the country’s cities and business areas. The industry provides jobs in all nine provinces, employing more than 58,000 people directly and another 55,000+ jobs indirectly throughout the value chain.
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