South Africa’s poultry industry is entering the period of highest risk for highly pathogenic avian influenza tied to its Southern Hemisphere location, with the disease currently contained but vaccination rollout still moving slowly, according to Izaak Breitenbach, chief executive of the Broiler Organization within the South African Poultry Association. The association’s own bulletin acknowledges that the disease has not yet been eradicated nationally, a status required before the country can fully restore chicken export markets.
Only one poultry company currently runs a vaccination programme, and that covers just a single site, with a second site under consideration, Breitenbach said. Wider adoption remains limited by the cost of vaccination and the complexity of government protocols required to authorise on-farm use, even though the industry association supports vaccination as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, biosecurity measures.
Data reported to the World Organisation for Animal Health show 145 South African poultry flocks were hit by highly pathogenic avian influenza between 2023 and 2025, with the H7N6 strain responsible for 116 of those outbreaks and H5N1 detected at other premises. Compensation for birds culled during past outbreaks has not been paid, Breitenbach said, adding financial strain for farmers who have already absorbed losses from previous waves of the disease.
A regional pattern, not an isolated problem
South Africa’s situation mirrors a wider pattern across the continent. Nigeria reported six new H5N1 outbreaks on commercial farms in the month before this assessment, with affected flocks ranging from 100 to 9,000 birds, concentrated mostly in Plateau State. Since December 2020, Nigeria has logged 503 outbreaks with the World Organisation for Animal Health, including 39 in 2025 alone, affecting more than 2.54 million birds through mortality or preventive culling. An FAO overview found Nigeria was the only African country to report the disease in birds so far in 2026.
Elsewhere on the continent, the Food and Agriculture Organization and partner agencies have supported surveillance and control work in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Liberia and Togo, while researchers documented the first known case of a different strain, H9N2, at a Mozambican broiler farm in August 2025, with genetic sequencing suggesting the virus likely arrived from the Middle East rather than from neighbouring African countries.
The industry’s memory of 2023
South Africa’s poultry sector is still recovering from a 2023 outbreak that wiped out roughly a third of the national chicken flock, a loss that reshaped how seriously producers now treat biosecurity investment. That history is why industry leaders are pressing the government to speed up vaccine authorisation protocols and resolve outstanding culling compensation before the next high-risk season takes hold, rather than waiting for a fresh outbreak to force the issue.
For now, containment appears to be holding, but the gap between the industry’s stated support for vaccination and the reality of a single company running a single site suggests the practical rollout remains years behind the policy conversation.
Export markets are watching closely, since trading partners that require disease-free certification will not lift restrictions until South Africa can demonstrate sustained eradication rather than temporary containment. Smaller producers, who often lack the capital reserves of larger integrated poultry companies, say they are particularly exposed if a new outbreak forces mass culling before compensation for the last one has even been settled. Industry leaders argue that resolving the compensation backlog would do more to encourage voluntary biosecurity investment across the sector than any new regulation, since farmers who have not been paid for past losses have little financial cushion to invest in prevention now.
