The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), through the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), is implementing the Ethiopian Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) as part of Food Systems Resilience Program for Eastern and Southern Africa (P178566) Program. This initiative addresses critical national challenges related to food and nutrition security.

Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) is being proposed based on the context of two ambitious programs of MoA (10 year Agriculture Sector Perspective Plan (2020-2030) and the Revision of Agriculture and Rural Development Policy of Ethiopia), as the next top important project by the MoA to contribute to food-system-transformation, enhanced competitiveness, rural job creation, and improved resilience. This project focuses on three main pillars (I) rural job creation (II) improving competitiveness of Agri-food system; and (III) enhanced resilience of agricultural sector. The FSRP serves as a foundation for emergency preparedness, poverty reduction, and long-term food system investments targeting on regional states of the country such as Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, Southwest Ethiopia, Sidama, Gambella, Benishangul-Gumuz, Harari and SNNPR (currently separated to Central Ethiopia and South Ethiopia regions) and two city administrations (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) to enhance resilience and readiness in the face of food security threats.

The program is government-led, implemented by the MoA, and financially supported by the World Bank through grants from the International Development Association (IDA). Particularly in the case of the FSRP, IDA financing comes from the national allocation to Ethiopia. In order to facilitate effective project execution, the MoA has established a Project Implementation Unit (PIU), which also oversees capacity-building efforts under the project management component. The program’s development objective (PDO) is to boost agricultural productivity and improve market access for key crop and livestock products in selected woredas, with a strong emphasis on increasing the participation of women and youth.

In a broad context, the program has four major components from which the sub-component 1.2 of the program which focusses of “Agricultural Technology Generation and Research System Transformation” was allocated for implementation by research directorates of the national and regional research institutes (Agricultural Research Intuitions of the country). In order to execute the project plan on sub-component 1.2, the Southwest Ethiopia Agricultural Research Institute (SWEARI) among Regional Agricultural Research Institutes (RARI’s) and the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) was mandated. The program has a seven-year implementation period starting 2022/23 in the Southwest Ethiopia Region in general. Accordingly SWEARI has various activities in order to facilitate the technology adoption to farmers and strengthening research systems in the region. The sub-component was further classified as:

1.2.1. Enhancing Agricultural Technology generation & Source technology production;

1.2.2. Promoting Farmer’s Adoption of Research Technologies/Innovations; and

1.2.3. Building capacities of research systems

1. Enhancing agricultural technology generation and source technology production

The Program will support the adaptation, generation and production of improved and innovative technologies, knowledge and information to enhance agricultural production and productivity of selected value chain commodities and increase farmers’ incomes in the food and agriculture sectors through implementing the following four interventions: i) Support selected Pipeline agricultural technologies within wider research system; ii) Newly initiated adaptation and generation of demand-driven technologies on high priority food commodities; iii) Source Technology Production.   

1. Promote Farmer’s Adoption of Research Agricultural Innovations through Pre-extension Demonstration

Here the program is aimed to enhance the adoption of agricultural technologies through pre-extension demonstration of newly recommended/released agricultural technologies, extending the accepted technologies to large-scale demonstrations to show impact, establishing Commodity Specialization Zones (CSZs) and establishing a strong linkage between stakeholders. To realize these, the following two groups of activities are supported and implemented:  i) On-farm demonstration of new agricultural technologies; ii) Promotion of agricultural technologies to urban and peri-urban; iii) Development of e-information system.

Under pre-extension demonstration, the program requires the established farmer’s research extension group (FREG) to evaluate and demonstrate technologies. FREG is a collaborative research approach where 15 to 20 farmers (30 to 40% are expected to be women) are grouped together to demonstrate improved technologies adapted and/or generated.

1. Building capacities of research systems

Capacitating the physical and human capacity and rendering assistance to promote enabling environment for the research system plays considerable role in generating and availing improved agricultural technologies/innovations that can transform food systems and address the growing demand for food. The capacity building will be conducted through: i) Human Capacity Development; ii) Physical Capacity Building; and iii) Rolling out of new approaches introduced through policy reform. The investment on physical research capacity and human capacity will be based on a thorough assessment of the existing resources of the research system at federal and regional levels.

All activities under this sub-sub-component are envisaged to be implemented by taking into consideration of crosscutting issues such as nutrition, job creation in the food and agriculture sectors, gender and climate smart agriculture.

Using the rich experience of Agricultural Growth program II (AGP-II) as a lesson, the FSRP was designed and implemented on 15 districts of Southwest Ethiopia Region (Gimbo, Shishoende, Bita, Decha, Goba, Chena, Shey-bench, Debub-bench, Semen-bench, Bero, Yeki, Andracha, Esera, Tocha, and konta) with the cover of two Agricultural Research centers such as Bonga Agricultural Research Center and Tarcha Agricultural Research Center.