Notice in the video how they're not feeding the chickens by letting them forage. They're always feeding them grain.
However, you have a point. If poor urban families do not have access to fairly priced chicken feed, they will face the choice of feeding them pet food (at a net economic loss) or cutting their losses and eating all the chickens right away.
It still sounds strange to me. I mean, how is it that 3rd country rural people cannot not know about chickens? I assumed this would be about giving flocks to urban poor, where there is precious little area not covered by concrete and the chickens would likely forrage on half poisoned cockroaches or something like that.
1. they are giving to urban poor
2. urban areas are covered in concrete.
From the article and the video it seems like chicken farming is already quite prevalent (they state a figure of 5% of the population of Burkina Faso have chickens) and they are hoping to increase that to 30%. I imagine a great charity like the Gates Foundation have done their due diligence and determined that the local charity they are working with knows what they are doing.
After a few years of living in places most people would consider third world, I have come to the conclusion that it is not safe to assume that people living in the third world have knowledge of any given topic.
I think knowledge is one of the things that is lacking the most, which is why it's so sad to see the commies in Beijing only allowing Mickey Mouse state newspapers and breaking the internet to perpetually keep people on the plantation.
Michael Jackson, however, has pretty good name recognition just about everywhere.