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.