In this wide‑ranging interview, Capital sits down with Dagnachew Lule (PhD), Senior Director of Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) at the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI), to discuss how the 15‑year‑old institution has tried to shift Ethiopian agriculture from subsistence to market‑driven production. He reflects on ATI’s flagship ACC programme, the expansion of cluster farming from 0.6 million ha piloted by ATI in 2019 to above 12 million hectares scaled by regional bureau of agriculture and MoA in 2025, persistent bottlenecks in inputs and data, and why he believes farmers must be allowed to move beyond mere production into processing, exporting and owning formal agribusiness companies. Excerpts; Read more>>