Building Landscape Resilience in Growing Together - Value Chain Transformation Program, Ethiopia

The effort to transform the value chains received a boost following the launch of Growing Together – Value Chain Transformation Program, Ethiopia at a colorful ceremony held at Haile Grand Hotel, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, on Thursday 20 February 2025. The launch of the Ethiopia Program follows a similar launch of the Tanzania component in Dar Es Salaam Tanzania in November 2024.

Growing Together is a 5-year initiative led by The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and funded by NORAD. IDH is an international organization that works with partners to create sustainable and inclusive global agricultural markets. The Program is implemented in partnership with Alliance Biodiversity International and CIAT, Rikolto and the Eastern African Grain Council (EAGC). The Program targeting Ethiopia and Tanzania seeks to transform local food markets, improve local food security and economies and increase the income of smallholder farmers. This is to be achieved through scaling operations of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to become larger and stronger food companies.

The Value Chain Transformation Program component in Ethiopia will work with eight SMEs and will target maize, soybean and sunflower as main crops in an integrated multifunctional and climate-smart landscape. Selection of these commodities as drivers of system transformation was informed by their contribution to income and jobs for smallholder farmers as well as the potential for job creation through production, marketing, processing and value addition.

The program aims to mobilize finance for each value chain of SMEs engaged in the program. This will be by extending investment readiness support to other SMEs that work with the project. The program will support over 60,000 smallholder farmers (50% women) to adopt more climate adaptive and regenerative agriculture practices and achieving 30% more yield per hectare.

The launch brought together the key landscape and sector stakeholders, among them companies and SMEs, government representatives, development partners, CGIAR centers, financial and digital organizations and local and international NGOs.