The focus of this review is to offer an overview of food and nutritional security, to identify associated constraints, and propose possible alternative solutions for improving the East African poultry sub-sector in the pursuit of food security, focusing on chicken breeding. To better understand the prospects of the poultry industry, we highlighted and combined confirming evidence of the phenotypic variability and genetic diversity of East African chicken genetic resources using both morphological and molecular tools, as well as performance traits. Furthermore, this work gives a detailed indication of what would be lost if indigenous chicken populations are left to suffer the ongoing massive genetic erosions due to various factors, not limited to indiscriminate crossbreeding. Previous and recent attempts to improve the productivity of indigenous chicken are highlighted, and possible future breeding plans and areas of immediate research are suggested as well. This review concludes that under the prevailing conditions, the village chicken production system appears to be the most imperious production system that needs to be extensively developed ; however, for the sustainability of the industry, the proposed improvement strategies should create a permanent balance between the competing needs of genetic improvement and the genetic diversity of the indigenous chicken genetic resource.
Keywords: East Africa; challenges; food and nutritional security; genetic improvement; indigenous chicken; production system; prospects.