Throughout the African continent poultry keeping has been practised by village communities for many generations. These birds currently make up more than 80% of the continent's poultry flock. Rural family poultry (RFP) are a valuable asset to local populations as they contribute significantly to food security, poverty alleviation and the promotion of gender equality, especially in disadvantaged groups and less favoured areas of rural Africa. The paper stresses the need to design, implement, monitor and evaluate RFP development programmes by taking sociocultural issues into account.

The high incidence of disease is one of the major constraints to smallholder poultry production systems in Africa. In order to control various poultry diseases, ethnoveterinary medicine is widely practised by poor village farmers. Natural products, especially those which are locally available, are generally used. The use of ethnoveterinary medicine cari be considered sustainable as it is economical, culturally acceptable and ecologically sound. Although villagepoultry farmers claim that these practices are effective, there is an urgent need for applied research to substantiate their assertions.

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