After being operational for more than five years in Ethiopia, N2Africa will end on 30 June 2019. To this regard, a workshop was organized on 3 May 2019 at ILRI Campus in Addis Ababa to recognize project partners and to close the project officially.
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The workshop was attended by nearly 100 participants from project partner and other stakeholder organizations and farmers comprised from the four project implementation regions; Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Oromia and SNNPR regions. |
Workshop participants |
The workshop was attended by nearly 100 participants from project partner and other stakeholder organizations and farmers comprised from the four project implementation regions; Amhara, Benishangul Gumuz, Oromia and SNNPR regions.
On her welcoming remarks to the workshop participants, Dr Siboniso Moyo, ILRI Director General’s representative to Ethiopia, highlights N2Africa’s successes in dissemination of legume technologies, capacity development, and smallholder farmers access to legume input and output markets. She particularly emphasised the public-private partnership (PPPs) approaches that the project followed to enhance technology dissemination and access to input-out markets. She also added that ILRI Director General, Jimmy Smith, appreciates the project for its initiative to this regard.
The workshop was officially opened by Dr Awoke Mulualem from Ministry of Agriculture of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. In his speech, Dr Awoke emphasized the importance of legumes in maintaining soil fertility, farm intensification, income generation and nutritional values to poor farming communities and the country in general. He appreciates N2Africa’s contribution and stressed the commitment of the Ethiopian government to scale up project initiatives.
“A walk through N2Africa- Ethiopia project implementation and partnership journey” was the title used by Dr Endalkachew Woldemeskel, country coordinator to N2Africa in Ethiopia to take the workshop participants through project implementation trajectory and successes. Key lessons from N2Africa impact study in Ethiopia by Theresa Ampadu-Boakye, N2Africa Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, followed which highlights the contribution of project approaches in attaining positive and high impact figures.
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Left: Participants of Panel session (left to right, Simret Yasabu panelist, Dr. Tesfaye Kumsa of Anno seed company, Endalkachew Abe of Tsehay Farmers Union, Engidu Legesse of Guts Agro Industry and Yared Tserse of Shayashone consult PLC) Right: N2Africa products and posters show at the Mini exhibition |
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The panel session on partnerships for enhanced technology scaling and sustainable agri-input and output business brought about a lively discussion among panellist and the workshop participants in general. The session emphasized the roles the public, private and other stakeholder should play to ensure scaling and sustainability and what policy support is needed. The panel session was guided by a presentation by Edward Baars, N2Africa Senior Business Development Officer.
An overview of legume policy framework presented by Ferko Bodnar from AgrEvalue, fitted well with the panel session as most issues concern the appropriate policy support to trigger legume business and legume sector development.
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Left: Partners and farmers recognition (Representative of HwU receiving certificate from Dr. Azage Tegegn) Right: Soyabean farmer from Jimma cluster (Mr. Aba Bia) receiving recognition certificate |
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Finally, the project awarded certificate of recognition to partners and farmer representatives. During his project closing remarks, Dr Azage Tegegne, Deputy to ILRI Director General’s representative to Ethiopia, appreciated N2Africa’s outreach to more than 70,000 direct beneficiary farmers in 31 districts with limited resources and asked the partners to sustain N2Africa initiatives, using his words, “keep growing your baby”!
Contributed by Tamiru Amanu and Endalkachew Wolde-meskel, resp. N2Africa Business Development Officer and N2Africa Country Coordinator