Africa Economy: FAO, partners launch project to boost agriculture innovation in Ethiopia

A project dubbed the Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS) project was launched on Wednesday in Ethiopia to boost the efficiency of agriculture innovation systems in the East African country.

The project, which has identified 8 pilot countries for its implementation across the world, aims to make agricultural innovation systems (AIS) more efficient and sustainable in meeting the demands of farmers, agri-business and consumers.

The CDAIS project takes into account the three dimensions of capacity development - individual, organization, and enabling environment, as well as functional and technical capacities, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The four-year project is implemented in the 8 countries with 12 million euros fund from the European Union through a grant to AGRINATURA-EEIG (a consortium of European universities and research institutes).

In Ethiopia, the project is implemented jointly by FAO and the International Centre for Development-oriented Research in Agriculture (ICRA).

The Ethiopia project was officially launched during a two-day workshop organized from April 13 to 14 in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa by key partners including FAO, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), AGRINATURA-EEIG and ICRA.

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Allahoury Amadou, FAO Representative in Ethiopia, stated that agriculture performs poorly in developing countries due to limited application of agricultural innovation and inefficient functioning of innovation systems.

Amadou noted that the CDIAS project, which envisages developing the functional capacity of the agriculture innovation systems (AIS), fits very well to the different regional initiatives of technology generation and dissemination and also to government priorities in Africa.

"The CDIAS project though modest in terms of resources, we trust, it will contribute towards bridging some of the gaps observed in the AIS at commodity and national levels," said the Country Representative.

Richard Hawkins, ICRA Director, said the project, which is a global project announced, is implemented in 8 countries, of which one is Ethiopia.

He told Xinhua, particularly, that the project is looking to improve the efficiency of the ways in which different researches, extension programs, and private sector work together to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

"We are trying to, in each country, look what the difficulties are faced by these different organizations and by farmer groups, farmer organizations in working with each other; we are trying to improve that process," he said, "We are not trying to bring new organizations; we try to improve the effectiveness with which the different organizations are already working."

The project is not bringing new vehicle to the country, he said, but to support that the already existing vehicles here run smoothly.

Fantahun Mengistu, EIAR Director General, said the CDIAS project is expected to help in developing capacity through advocacy and policy dialogues to make agricultural innovation systems (AIS) more efficient and sustainable in meeting the users' needs to better serving the agriculture sector.

He told Xinhua that the project helps in bringing the different actors in agriculture sector to work together in researches, technology generation and putting technology into use. Endit