EthiopiaWith one of the fastest growing non-oil economies in Africa, Ethiopia presents tremendous opportunities for inclusive growth. Agriculture accounts for 85 percent of total employment and more than 45 percent of the gross domestic product. However, many smallholder farmers and enterprises are not integrated into commercial markets due to a lack of coordination, information, and access to markets.
85% of total employment in Ethiopia is in the agricultural sector.
For over a decade, TechnoServe in Ethiopia has partnered with farmers, cooperatives, suppliers, agro-processor buyers, and other market actors--as well as the government--in order to develop competitive, inclusive agricultural market systems. We help farmers to increase productivity through training on improved agricultural practices; cooperatives and businesses to strengthen operations, governance, and sustainability; and multinational companies to sustainably source from smallholders. This work is grounded in advancing the country's green economy and environmental well-being, as well as gender equality, for which we maintain a strong commitment to internal and project gender equality targets.
TechnoServe is working with Nespresso to source high-quality coffee from Kenya and Ethiopia, while reducing poverty and improving resilience to climate change for approximately 57,000 households by 2020.
The Coffee Initiative worked with local farmers in East Africa to improve agronomy and business practices, establish new coffee cooperatives and strengthen existing ones, and help cooperatives create business plans and access financing for wet mills.
Aiming to increase smallholder farmers’ access to sustainable markets in Ethiopia, TechnoServe implemented the World Food Program’s Purchase for Progress (WFP-P4P) project by providing support to 16 farmer-owned cooperative unions.
In Ethiopia’s Sidama coffee region, hundreds of millions of liters of wastewater and coffee pulp are accidentally discharged into the rivers during coffee processing. Since 2012, Mother Parkers Tea & Coffee and TechnoServe have partnered on the Water Wise Coffee project to to protect the rivers by implementing sustainable water management practices.
Ethiopia is the largest exporter of Arabica coffee in Africa, with 70 percent of exports being unwashed coffee. With support from Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) and IDH, TechnoServe is looking to make the unwashed coffee sector in Ethiopia's Jimma, Lekempti and Sidama regions more sustainable.
Some of the highest quality coffee in the world comes from the Sidama Zone of Ethiopia, produced primarily by 200,000 smallholder farming families, most of whom continue to live in poverty due to small farm sizes and low productivity. Beginning in 2013, TechnoServe in partnership with IDH, Nestlé and Nestlé Nespresso is working to increase the income of these farmers by increasing the supply of high-quality, sustainable produce coffee.
Solutions for African Food Enterprises (SAFE) was a public-private partnership between TechnoServe, Partners in Food Solutions, and USAID that aimed to increase the competitiveness of the African food processing sector to expand availability of affordable and nutritious foods to local populations. The program benefited more than 1,000 food processors who source from more than 800,000 smallholder farmers in five countries.
The inability to access safe, nutritious, and affordable food is a problem for many people across East and Southern Africa, leading to widespread malnutrition in children. At the same time, millions of smallholder farmers struggle to find profitable markets for their food crops. Building a more effective…
The Partners in Food Solutions (PFS)-TechnoServe Alliance matches the expertise of leading global food companies with the needs of African-based food processing companies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia.
In 2017, TechnoServe engaged ImpactMatters, an impact audit firm founded with support from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), to review several projects within our portfolio. This impact audit reviews the second phase of the Coffee Initiative, C.I. II, which was implemented by TechnoServe from 2012 to 2016 in Ethiopia, Kenya,…
This final report explores five years of impact through the Solutions for African Food Enterprises (SAFE), a public-private partnership between TechnoServe, Partners in Food Solutions and the United States Agency for International Development that aimed to increase the competitiveness of the African food processing sector and expand the availability of…
