Updated: May 2008

Ethiopia Country Programme

Prolinnova–Ethiopia is a national platform to create space and provide a conducive environment for recognising and enriching local innovation processes in agriculture and natural resource management (NRM). It aims to scale up and integrate Participatory Innovation Development (PID) approaches in governmental and non-governmental organisations concerned with agricultural and NRM research, extension, education and training. Its overall objective is to contribute to enhancing food security, safeguarding the environment and improving rural and urban livelihoods based on sustainable use of natural resource. It is an initiative of several organisations within Ethiopia that had been working in participatory research and development in relative isolation and decided to join forces in 2003. For more about the background to this initiative, view the August 2003 (Ethiopia) National Workshop report.

The Prolinnova–Ethiopia Steering Group (PSG) has members from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR); the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoA); four universities Addis Ababa, Haramaya, Hawassa and Mekelle University; six NGOs Agri-Service Ethiopia (ASE), FARM-Africa, Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD), Organisation for Relief and Development in Amhara (ORDA), Sustainable Land Use Forum (SLUF) and Pastoralist Forum Ethiopia (PFE); and the International Service for National Agricultural Research of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI/ISNAR). The PSG is currently chaired by the Head of Farmer-Research-Extension Linkages in EIAR, and the Secretariat is hosted by ASE. The core Working Group of Prolinnova–Ethiopia is made up of five focal persons:

• Teklu Tesfaye, EIAR, for policy dialogue
• Demekech Gera , ASE, for administration and finance
• Melaku Jirata, MoARD, for monitoring and evaluation
• Elias Zerfu, IFPRI/ISNAR, for PID capacity building
• Habtemariam Abate, SLUF, for documentation and sharing.

After making an initial inventory of organisations and experiences in participatory research and development in Ethiopia and holding a national workshop in August 2004, Prolinnova–Ethiopia drew up an action plan to cover several years. The work is being implemented in four distinct agro-ecological and social settings in the country: typical Ethiopian highlands (two areas in Amhara and Tigray Regions), coffee-growing areas (including most of Oromia Region), enset-growing areas (most of the Southern Region); and pastoralist areas (the drylands inhabited by Afar, Somali and Borana livestock-keepers). Introductory workshops were held to start off the multi-stakeholder partnership at regional level. Research and development workers in these areas were encouraged to identify local innovators and to bring them to a second series of workshops for training in PID and joint planning of PID experiments building on local innovations and on innovators' questions or hypotheses. In each area, there is a sub-platform composed of multiple stakeholders in agriculture and NRM and hosted by one of the members.

Other activities of Prolinnova–Ethiopia have included:

• compilation of an inventory of Ethiopian organisations with experience in participatory research and development,
• review of previous studies and documents on local innovation,
• development of guidelines for documenting local innovations and setting up relevant databases,
• compilation of an inventory of local innovations (first in a series of such booklets),
• video film on local innovation,
• awareness raising and policy dialogue about local innovation and PID,
• co-organisation of a national workshop on local innovation in livestock-keeping, and compilation and publication of the proceedings,
• organisation of an international Prolinnova workshop held in Yirgalem, southern Ethiopia , and compilation and publication of the proceedings.

Prolinnova–Ethiopia is now testing modalities of Local Innovation Support Funds in the Southern Region (Amaro area) and Tigray Region (Axum area) and implementing a project funded by ActionAid to integrate the PID approach into the work of Farmer Training Centres.

For more information on Prolinnova–Ethiopia activities, please refer to our mid-year and annual reports or contact the programme coordinator Tesfahun Fenta (tfenta@yahoo.com).