ESSP Research Notes

Development of the rural household energy insecurity experiences scale with insights from Ethiopia

There is little evidence on how energy poverty affects rural households in low- and middle-income countries. To address this, the CGIAR NEXUS Gains Initiative developed the Rural Household Energy Insecurity Experiences Scale (RHEIES) and piloted the tool in Ethiopia using in-depth interviews. We find heterogeneous energy insecurity experiences across locations and gender dimensions.

Advancing climate-smart financial solutions for smallholder farmers: Lessons from the CGIAR Climate Resilience Initiative

Smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries face climate-related risks that increase their income volatility and compromise their well-being. The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR) has developed and implemented a suite of innovative instruments aimed at transforming the climate adaptation capacity of smallholder farmers. This brief examines the potential of these bundled financial solutions in enhancing smallholder farmers' resilience to climate risks and documents ClimBeR's experience in implementing and scaling these instruments.

Can social assistance reduce violent conflict and civil unrest? Evidence from a large-scale public works program in Ethiopia

Violent conflict and political instability are escalating worldwide, with Africa experiencing some of the most severe challenges. The region, home to 60% of the world’s poor (World Bank 2023), saw statebased armed conflict events nearly triple between 2007 and 2023 (Rustad 2024), while protests more than quadrupled from 2007 to 2019 (OECD 2021). Over this period, poverty reduction in Africa has been particularly sluggish in fragile and conflict-affected areas (Beegle et al. 2018a), likely due to the substantial economic losses associated with violent conflict and civil unrest.

Constraints to agricultural mechanization in Ethiopia: The case of solar irrigation pumps

Agriculture and food production in Ethiopia are dominated by smallholder farmers and characterized by a low input-low output system. Mechanization of agriculture—in particular, the widespread adoption of tractors for land preparation and motorized pumps for irrigation—is considered by many to be the key to breaking this low-productivity system. Agricultural mechanization can improve the livelihoods of smallholders by reducing drudgery and postharvest losses and by increasing the efficiency of farm operations. However, mechanization rates have increased only slowly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Increasing retail sales of healthy foods in Ethiopia: Lessons from MSME surveys in two urban areas

The food environment represents the place in which demand for food meets supply—consumers purchase foods in the food environment, while retailers of the food consumers purchase represent the end of the value chain. In many countries, the food environment is characterized by a large number of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) who sell the majority of healthy foods. Ethiopia fits this description; among healthy food groups purchased by at least one-third of customers within a given week, at least 88 percent of consumers making purchases by them from MSMEs (de Brauw and Hirvonen 2024).

This note summarizes lessons from a set of surveys conducted among 1686 MSMEs likely to sell healthy foods in woreda 8 of Kolfe Keranyo in Addis Ababa and in Butajira town in central Ethiopia in late 2023. The first survey concentrated on listing all businesses selling food in selected areas of the two sample locations; the second survey then asked detailed questions about the business environment and practices of selected MSMEs. The majority of surveyed MSMEs can be characterized as either kiosks or small shops; the next most common were restaurants, followed by street vendors and juice shops (de Brauw et al. 2024).

PSNP and sustainable land management in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation

The Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) is Ethiopia’s national safety net program, launched in 2005 and currently in its fifth phase. The objective of the PSNP is to protect households’ food consumption and assets, reduce their vulnerability to shocks, and address underlying causes of extreme poverty (MoA FSCD 2020). Households who have an adult available to work are required to take part in public works that focus on building infrastructure and improving the natural resource base (MoA FSCD 2020). As such, these projects are partially designed to contribute to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, there is limited evidence about how sustainable land management (SLM) activities are conducted under the PSNP on both publicly and privately operated lands, and how the uptake of these activities and their benefits differ by gender.

Leveraging social protection for women’s engagement in sustainable land management: IPSR Innovation Profile. First edition, March 2024

This sustainable land management (SLM) innovation draws on qualitative formative research, co-design of an innovation with partners, a quantitative impact evaluation testing the innovation, and resulting guidance for partners on implementing the innovation. This project is delivered as part of a multifaceted graduation model social protection program, SPIR II (Strengthen Productive Safety Net Program Institutions and Resilience II) that seeks to further sustain nutrition security and reduce risks to livelihoods for households participating in the Ethiopia’s national safety program, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), which provides consumption support in the form of cash and food transfers. The goal of the SLM innovation being tested is to leverage social protection to promote women’s engagement in sustainable land management practices. Strengthening women’s involvement in sustainable land management is seen as potentially important given that extreme weather events pose risks for poor households in rural Ethiopia and women may be disproportionately at risk from these shocks. For example, Kato et al (2021) find that plots controlled by women in Ethiopia are more prone to soil erosion and of poorer quality in terms of soil depth, and women’s participation in watershed committees is low. The sustainable land management practices being introduced may help protect women and their families from these shocks over the longer term as well as introduce an additional livelihoods avenue. The innovation tested includes providing training (to either women only or to both men and women from same households) and free inputs (tree seedlings, vegetable seeds and tools for home gardening) among participants of the PSNP public works program, thus helping to address constraints to accessing information and inputs, and assessing whether spousal cooperation is important for successful adoption of these technologies.

The contributions of Public Works in watershed rehabilitation and irrigation in Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance supported Productive Safety Net Program areas of Ethiopia to resilience and nutrition

The Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), launched in 2005 and operating in eight regional states, harmonizes the delivery of donor support to vulnerable populations experiencing chronic food insecurity and shocks. PSNP investments aim to improve food consumption and nutrition, while also protecting and developing assets for sustaining stable access to food. PSNP differentiates two types of beneficiaries: (1) Households with no able-bodied members that receive direct support in the form of cash transfers or in-kind support; and (2) Public work (PW) beneficiaries, who receive payments in exchange for work on various types of productive investments, such as watershed rehabilitation, irrigation, road and other infrastructure. This policy note summarizes results from an assessment of the impacts of PSNP investments supported by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) in watershed rehabilitation and small-scale irrigation (SSI) on food security, nutrition and resilience in Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray regions of Ethiopia and Dire Dawa City administrative area between 2017 and 2021. The interventions assessed include area closures, SSI, other physical soil and water conservation practices, and overall watershed-level activities. Investments in SSI included construction of river-diversion schemes, lined canals, earthen canals, ponds and rainwater harvesting schemes. As watershed rehabilitation interventions take years to decades to show impacts, two time periods were used in the biophysical assessment: long-term changes, covering the period of 1984 to 2020, as well as short-term changes that specifically covered the period prior and during the USAID BHA program. The assessment combined socioeconomic analysis (quantitative and qualitative), as well as high-resolution remote sensing and biophysical modeling in selected watersheds. Remote sensing and biophysical mod eling provided insights on environmental effects and climate resilience of BHA’s watershed rehabilitation interventions, whereas quantitative and qualitative analyses helped identify the food security, nutrition and resilience impacts of these interventions. Of note, the assessment was undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic and was also substantially affected by civil conflicts in the northern part of the country. This affected both the study design and data access and the implementation of the BHA-supported PSNP PW investments. The results should be seen in this context.

Outsource agrifood service MSMEs facilitating pivoting by fruits & vegetables farmers, wholesalers, and retailers

There is an important gap in the literature regarding evidence about the emergence of outsource agrifood services. We contend that there are few studies on outsource services for differentiated product value chains, particularly in developing countries. To some extent, also, there is a knowledge gap regarding the use and effectiveness of eco-certification and labeling compliance-assisting services in developed countries. The bulk of attention on outsource services is centered at the commodity phase (such as with bulk grains) and the modern stage, and less attention is being paid to the product differentiation phase. To fill these voids, we focus on three country illustrations, ranging in the product cycle phases from transitional to transitional-modern to modern, and from early differentiating case in Ethiopia (on basic quality) to intermediate differentiating case in Indonesia (on advanced quality and variety differentiation in mangoes), to advanced-differentiating case in France (on eco-labeling and certification). We focus on horticulture as it is rapidly growing, and rapidly differentiating both in developed and developing countries. We conclude that policies and public investments facilitating the formation of these services are important. Importantly, we found that without these emerging outsource services, farmers would not have been able to be resilient to the shocks of market requirements and climate change.

Food-based dietary guidelines as a gamechanger in Ethiopia’s food system transformation pathway

In this brief, we reflect on the factors that contributed to the Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) receiving high level recognition in key Ethiopian policy documents. FBDGs, launched in 2022, have been recognized as a key gamechanger in the effort to improve the Ethiopia food systems.

Poverty impacts of food price increases in Ethiopia

After a long period of relatively stable prices on world markets, the prices of key food staples began to rise from around the beginning of 2020. This period of price increases, spanning the Covid-19 pandemic and then the price shocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised serious concerns about the welfare of poor people in countries such as Ethiopia.

Risk-Contingent Credit (RCC): Assessing smallholders' agricultural credit needs and the feasibility of implementing RCC in Ethiopia

Agricultural credit is an important instrument for improving farm productivity, the welfare of farm households, and their resilience to weather-related shocks. However, small-scale farmers’ access to credit is limited by demand- and supply-side constraints. Risk-contingent credit, which bundles credit with insurance against climate risks, is one promising solution. This study, conducted in three woredas in Ethiopia, implemented a game designed to increased farmers’ understanding of the product and finds that farmers recognize the potential of RCC.

Ethiopia’s agrifood system structure and drivers of transformation

Ethiopia stands out as one of the fastest growing African countries between 2009 and 2019, with an average annual GDP growth rate close to 10 percent (ESS 2020). The global COVID-19 pandemic coupled with an armed civil conflict that started in November 2020 and continued for two years caused a significant slowdown in economic growth during the 2020–2022 period. Ethiopia’s GDP growth is now projected to recover to 5.3 percent in 2023 and 6.1 percent in 2024 (World Bank 2023), remaining well below the growth rates achieved in the pre-pandemic era. Agriculture remains an important sector in Ethiopia, accounting for one-third of GDP and two-thirds of jobs. The agriculture sector, like the broader economy, performed well prior to the pandemic and civil conflict, averaging 5.5 percent growth from 2009 to 2019 (ESS 2020), and played an important role in weathering the global commodity market shocks during 2022–2023 (Diao and Thurlow 2023). In this brief, we look beyond primary agriculture to understand how Ethiopia’s broader agrifood system (AFS) is contributing to growth and transformation in the country.

Can markets be developed to promote economic self-reliance of refugees? An evaluation of the promotion of digital financial services in Ethiopia by SHARPE

The Strengthening Host and Refugee Populations in Ethiopia (SHARPE) programme uses a market systems development approach to promote increased self-reliance and economic opportunities for refugees and host communities in three areas in Ethiopia: Jijiga, Dollo Ado, and Gambella. SHARPE aims to generate economic opportunities for refugee hosting communities through the piloting and scaling of interventions across different sectors. This approach is based upon understanding the economic barriers that refugee and host communities face, and working with key stakeholders – including businesses, government, and service providers - to improve market function for both host community members and refugees residing in target communities. SHARPE identified the financial market as a strong target for market systems interventions, based on reforms to the Refugee Proclamation in Ethiopia in 2019 allowing refugees to access telecommunications and banking services. As a result, nascent mobile money platforms aligned with banks could begin to market digital financial services to refugees. As digital financial services had already been growing in Somali region, we focused impact evaluation work around the investments SHARPE was making in the financial market system in the two areas of Somali region (Jijiga and Dollo Ado).

Measuring changes in Ethiopia’s agri-food system

Transformation of the agri-food system (AFS) is a leading pathway to achieve the USG Global Food Security Strategy Objective 1 of “Inclusive agriculture-led growth”. The AFS encompasses the primary agricultural sector, as well as all upstream and downstream agriculture-related activities. An expansion of the AFS’s off-farm components is central to the process of agricultural transformation and is strongly associated with economic development. The Percent change in value-added in the agri-food system (AgGDP+) and Employment in the agri-food system (AgEMP+) indicators are useful to track this process.

Addressing Lake Beseka's challenges: Potential solutions

Lake Beseka, a shallow saline lake in the East African Rift Valley of Ethiopia, has expanded considerably since the 1960s, inundating a large land area. The lake’s expansion is a result of groundwater discharge, inflow from hot springs, and excess irrigation water entering the lake through subsurface flows

Digital farmer registry and tailored extension and advisory services in Ethiopia: A process evaluation

Ethiopia hosts one of the largest extension systems in Africa, with approximately 43 development agents (DAs) per 10,000 farmers, more than 15,000 farmers training centers (FTCs) that serve as a focal point for agricultural development activities at the local level, and 25 Agricultural Technical Voca tional Education and Training (ATVET) institutes that prepare and update extension staff in both general and specialized fields of expertise (Berhane et al. 2018; ATA 2014; Davis et al. 2010). DAs report edly reach more than 75% of farm households in the country (CSA 2017), and every kebele hosts an average of three DAs, each with his or her own specialization. However, there are concerns about the quality of extension and advisory services DAs provide mainly because DAs are overburdened and under-resourced. DAs actively engage in activities that do not typically fall under the mandate of agricultural extension services, including the collection of taxes, loan repayments and mobilization of labor for public works. A related concern is the simple “technology-push” approach to agricultural intensification followed by most DAs since they do not have the time to closely know the farmers and provide a more “tailored and knowledge-driven” advisory that puts farmers’ priorities and technical capabilities at the center of DA’s effort (Berhane et al. 2018; Bachewe et al. 2017).

Barriers to adoption of optimal complementary feeding practices in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation: Evidence from SPIR II

Since its inception in 2005, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) has been a cornerstone of the Ethiopian government’s strategy for poverty alleviation, disaster risk management, and rural development. The PSNP provides food or cash transfers targeted to poor households in the form of payments for seasonal labor on public works or as direct support to households. It has played an important role in improving the lives of poor Ethiopian households by reducing household food insecurity, increasing asset holdings, and improving agricultural productivity (Berhane et al. 2014; Hoddinott et al. 2017).

Barriers to enrollment in secondary school in Ethiopia: A formative qualitative investigation: Evidence from SPIR II

Since its inception in 2005, the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) has been a cornerstone of the Ethiopian government’s strategy for poverty alleviation, disaster risk management, and rural development. The PSNP provides food or cash transfers targeted to poor households in the form of payments for seasonal labor on public works or as direct support to households. It has played an important role in improving the lives of poor Ethiopian households by reducing household food insecurity, increasing asset holdings, and improving agricultural productivity (Berhane et al. 2014; Hoddinott et al. 2012).

Irrigation and agricultural transformation in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s rivers and streams (Figure 1) and its ground water potential of 2.6 billion m3 of groundwater potential (Awulachew et al., 2008) is estimated to have a potential to irrigate 5.3 million hectares of land. So far, less than 5 percent of the potentially irrigable land is currently irrigated, exposing the country’s agriculture to the vagaries of nature. The startling divergence between irrigation potential and utilization has been the subject of policy discussions in the recent decade, which results in a significant impetus towards irrigation development in the country both in expressed commitments and actual investments. For instance, the current 10-year development plan of the country placed irrigation as the main catalyst for accelerated agricultural transformation. In terms of investment, there are at least 13 ongoing large-scale irrigation development projects with a combined command area of more than 400,000 hectares (close to twice the current size of irrigated area by smallholder farmers). The government has also recently allowed duty-free imports of irrigation technologies to encourage small-scale irrigation development.

Agricultural intensification in Ethiopia: Patterns, trends, and welfare impacts

This study examined the patterns, trends, and drivers of agricultural intensification and productivity growth during the recent decade (2012 - 2019) using three rounds of household data collected from four agricultural regions of Ethiopia. The descriptive results indicate a positive trend both in adoption and intensity of inputs and outputs, albeit from a low base and with considerable heterogeneity by access to information, rainfall levels and variability, labor, soil quality, and remoteness, among others. The econometric results show significant association between intensification, yield growth, household dietary diversity, and consumer durables. The results on the association between current yield levels and per capita consumption expenditures are however mixed (i.e., while an increase in cereal yield improves food consumption expenditures, an increase in cash crop yield improves only non-food consumption expenditures). In sum, while the increasing input intensification and the resulting yield gains are associated with improvements in household diets and consumer durables, it falls short to have strong impact on incomes (as measured by total consumption expenditures), indicating that additional efforts must be made to see meaningful impacts on higher order outcomes. Additional welfare improv-ing productivity gains through increased input intensification may require investments in appropriate fer-tilizer blends; investments in improved seeds (to accelerate varietal turnover), ways to mitigate production (rainfall) risk, and investments to remodel Ethiopia’s extension system to provide much needed technical support to farmers on production methods.

Rural income diversification in Ethiopia: Patterns, trends, and welfare impacts

Increased diversification of rural households into the rural non-farm economy is an important driver of economic growth and structural transformation in countries like Ethiopia where most people live in rural areas and are largely dependent on seasonal agriculture. In this study, we explore the patterns and trends of diversification and assess its drivers and welfare effects during the recent decade (2012 – 2019) using three rounds of representative household data collected from four major regions in Ethiopia. Our results show that sample households generally adopt a livelihood strategy dominated by farming and that the level of diversification has been stagnant over the period of analysis considered. More importantly, most households continue to draw a substantial share of their income from crop production, followed by livestock. The income from non-farm activities accounts only between 17-23% of the total household income. Upon exploring the link between diversification and welfare outcomes, we find that households with relatively diversified income sources have significantly higher consumption expenditure per capita, consume diverse diets, and live in house with better roof quality. Further analyses reveal that income diversification is positively associated with credit access, membership in social insurance, ownership of assets and wealth, and population density. Conversely, access to relatively large, fertile, and irrigable land discourages diversification. In sum, the results imply the need for a deliberate effort to expand the non-farm economy to tap its full potential for employment generation, income growth, and overall welfare improvements.

Financial services in refugee hosting areas: Can they promote inclusion? Lessons from the SHARPE project in Ethiopia

Digital financial inclusion is important to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Digital financial tools, such as mobile money, can, in principle, be used by anyone with a cell phone. There are several different ways that mobile money and services surrounding mobile money can help reduce poverty. For example, research demonstrates that mobile money helps increase remittances from labour migrants. It also helps households to weather negative shocks to income. In addition, it helps encourage investments whether on-farm or in self-employment activities.

Energy solutions for irrigation in Ethiopia

The policy brief presents a short summary of a study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) that used an integrated irrigation-energy planning framework to identify groundwater irrigation development potentials in Ethiopia under three energy solutions: grid-connected electricity, off-grid solar PV, and diesel.

Ethiopia: Impacts of the Ukraine and global crises on poverty and food security

Global food, fuel, and fertilizer prices have risen rapidly in recent months, driven in large part by the fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia. Other factors, such as export bans, have also contributed to rising prices. Palm oil and wheat prices increased by 56 and 100 percent in real terms, respectively, between June 2021 and April 2022, with most of the in-crease occurring since February (Figure 1). Wide variation exists across products, with real maize prices increasing by only 11 percent and rice prices declining by 13 percent. The price of crude oil and natural gas has also risen substantially, while the weighted average price of fertilizer has dou-bled. With these changes in global prices, many developing countries and their development part-ners are concerned about the implications for economic stability, food security, and poverty.

Value chain surveys: What do they cover, and how well?

While agricultural value chains are rapidly evolving (Reardon, 2015; Reardon et al., 2021; Barrett et al., 2022), research attention has increasingly taken notice of the important role played by actors in the ag ricultural midstream. The agricultural midstream consists of activities that take place after production but before final sale to consumers, with existing literature highlighting transportation, trading/wholesaling, processing/packaging, and storage as key activities (Reardon, 2015; Ambler et al., 2022a). However, even as research on the agricultural midstream has been growing, little is known about the poten tial financial needs or capabilities of midstream actors (Ambler et al., 2022a; Bellemare et al., 2021; Reardon and Minten, 2021). If midstream actors face meaningful financial constraints in growing their businesses, it can hinder employment opportunities, increase consumer food prices, depress agricul tural producer prices, or constrain growth more broadly.

Exploring small scale irrigation-nutrition linkages

The evidence on the potential for agricultural interventions to contribute to improved nutrition has grown considerably over the past decade (Ruel et al., 2018). Numerous studies have explored both positive and negative effects of agriculture on nutrition and health (Ruel and Alderman, 2013; Herforth and Harris, 2014; Masset et al., 2012; Hoddinott, 2012). However, as an important and growing component of agriculture, smallscale irrigation has not yet been given the attention it deserves. The Innovation Laboratory for Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI) set out, among others, to fill the evidence gap on irrigation-nutrition linkages. Domènech (2015) describes several potential pathways through which irrigation can influence food security, nutrition, and health outcomes, including 1) a production pathway, 2) an income pathway, 3) a water supply pathway, and 4) a women’s empowerment pathway. To illustrate these pathways, we adapted the agriculturenutrition framework of Herforth and Harris (2014) to include irrigation (Figure 1), while also noting a fifth, negative pathway that links irrigation to water pollution and disease via the application of fertilizers and pesticides and via supporting vector-borne diseases, such as malaria or schistosomiasis, respectively (Passarelli et al., 2018).

Accelerating technical change through ICTs: Evidence from a video-mediated extension experiment in Ethiopia

The use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to address a wide array of development issues has gained considerable attention among governments, practitioners, and researchers in recent years (Lwoga and Sangeda 2019). While early studies focused on mobile phones and text messaging, attention is quickly shifting to other media, including video. Many studies on the use of video as a medium explore how increased access and consumption of information can lead to behavior changes that ultimately result in welfare-improving outcomes. This study explores whether video-mediated extension leads to the increased, sustained uptake of productivity-enhancing agricultural technologies and practices by small-scale farmers. Over the two-year period of 2017–2018, the Government of Ethiopia and Digital Green conducted the large-scale rollout of a video-mediated extension approach. We examine the impact of this rollout on a range of outcome indicators, including whether targeting the video-mediated approach to both spouses of a household was more effective than targeting the (typically male) household head alone. Our main outcomes of interest include farmer uptake of the subject technologies and the yield gains resulting from these technologies. Our study provides insights into the mechanisms behind the observed effects and an analysis of the approach’s cost effectiveness. Our results demonstrate that the video-mediated extension approach led to increases in farmer uptake of improved agricultural technologies and practices. In the first year of the experiment, we find an overall 6 percentage point increase in technology uptake, which translates into a 10 percent increase over the mean of the control group. An analysis of uptake by type of technology shows that the video-mediated approach resulted in an increase of 13, 20, and 15 percent over control group means for row planting, precise seeding rate, and urea top/side dressing, respectively. These results endure in the second year of the experiment, pointing to farmers’ effective uptake of the technology beyond a mere trial in one production season. Upon exploring the mechanisms that explain these adoption effects, we find that the video-mediated extension approach led to an increase in extension reach, with a 35 percent increase in farmers’ attendance at extension sessions (likely due to interest in the video medium). Among farmers assigned to the video-mediated extension approach, we also find a higher level of technical understanding of focal agricultural technologies and practices. While our results suggest greater participation and knowledge gains among (typically female) spouses who also participated in the video-mediated extension approach, we do not find clear evidence that targeting both spouses led to higher rates of technology uptake.

Evidence on trends in wellbeing of rural Ethiopian households during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a significant threat to public health throughout most of the world as the coronavirus continues to spread, mostly unchecked by limited availability of vaccines, and largescale surges in cases are fed by new variants of the virus. In Ethiopia, surges in COVID-19 cases after months of apparently low levels of infection have periodically required renewed restrictions locally to control the spread of the virus. Thus, it is necessary to review available date to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on households in Ethiopia, and particularly on the poorest households, who are more vulnerable to protracted effects of the virus and associated restrictions on activity as a result of their limited resources. We present results of two rounds of a phone survey, conducted in June and August 2020, respectively, of around 1,200 rural households. All households in the sample are beneficiaries of the fourth phase of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP4) and also participate in the USAID-funded Strengthening PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience (SPIR) project, implemented by World Vision, CARE and ORDA in North Wollo and Wag Himra zones in Amhara, and primarily in East and West Hararghe zones in Oromia. The targeted phone survey respondents were adult males from sample households in IFPRI’s experimental impact evaluation of SPIR who provided a phone number during the 2019 midline survey. This is a subsample of the broader SPIR evaluation sample as 33% of households provided a phone number and thus were eligible for inclusion in the phone survey. Available evidence suggests that households who provided a phone number are characterized by higher socioeconomic status vis-à-vis other SPIR households in the study sample who did not provide a phone number. However, as all households in the phone survey are SPIR beneficiaries, they are still relatively poor in the broader context of rural Ethiopia. We report evidence from the two survey rounds on coronavirus awareness and protective measures taken; changes in livelihoods, including crop production and livestock raising; access to and utilization of markets; changes in food consumption and food security; experience with desert locusts and fall armyworms; and exposure to public programming.

Synopsis: Ethiopia’s social protection program is associated with improved household resilience

We examine the implication of the Productive Safety Nets Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia on the economic resilience of rural households. Using five-rounds of household panel data covering nine years, we implement a recently developed probabilistic moment-based approach to measure resilience and evaluate the role of PSNP transfers and duration of participation in PSNP on household resilience. We document three important findings. First, although PSNP transfers are positively strongly associated with resilience, we find that transfers below the median are less likely to generate meaningful improvements in resilience. Second, continuous participation in PSNP is associated with higher resilience. Third, our evaluation of both short-term welfare outcomes and longer-term resilience suggests that these outcomes are likely to be driven by different factors. These findings suggest boosting household resilience will require significant investments in social protection programs and continuous participation in these programs. Our findings have important implications for the design and targeting of social protection programs in Africa, where safety nets programs generally operate at small scale with small transfers to beneficiaries over relatively short durations.

Will promotion of agricultural mechanization help prevent child labour?

The FAO-IFPRI study, of which this brief is a summary, focuses on the use of tractors because they are among the most versatile farm mechanization tools and are universal power sources for all other driven implements and equipment in agriculture, with significant potential to replace animal draught power and human power, including children’s muscle power. Tractor use is typically also the first type of machine-powered equipment in use at lower levels of agricultural development, the context where most child labour is found. Mechanization is mostly assumed to reduce child labour, as it is expected to be labour saving in general. Yet, this is not always the case, as it has also been observed that the use of tractors and other machinery could increase children’s engagement in farm activities. This may be the case if, for instance, their use allows farms to cultivate larger areas, or if it leads to shifting chores of work from hired labor to family workers, e.g. for weeding edges of farmland not reachable by machinery. Evidence has been scant thus far, but the few available studies have mostly lent greater support to the hypothesis that mechanization reduces children’s productive engagement. Most available studies have focused on specific cases and based on scant data. The new FAO-IFPRI study provides a rigorous quantitative assessment for seven developing countries in Asia (India, Nepal and Viet Nam) and sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania) based on comparable farm household survey data.

Sustainable land management, gender, and agricultural productivity: Evidence from Ethiopia's fragile watershed observatory

Land degradation is a pressing global challenge, with three billion people residing in degraded landscapes. The global cost of land degradation is estimated to be about $300 billion per year, with Africa south of the Sahara accounting for 26 percent of the total global costs due to land-use and land-cover changes. In Ethiopia, it is estimated that more than 85 percent of land is moderately to severely degraded due to changes in land use and cover, costing the country an estimated US$4.3 billion annually. In order to halt further degradation and support essential restoration through sustainable land management (SLM) and related investments, the Water and Land Resource Center (WLRC) and its consortium of development partners established six learning watersheds in Central and North-Western Ethiopia with the ultimate goal of improving water security and crop and livestock productivity.

The impact of COVID-19 in Ethiopia: brief

This brief examines the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 in Ethiopia so far, and suggests responses required to augment household welfare recovery and sustain poverty reduction.

Ethiopia: The impact of COVID-19 and food system responses

In Ethiopia, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected livelihoods and caused declines in the gross domestic product (GDP) of the agrifood system (AFS) as well as in total GDP. CGIAR has been working with partners in the country to inform responses, focusing on the pandemic’s effects on rural households, the delivery of health services, and food systems and diets.

Policy-induced market distortions along agricultural value chains: Evidence from Ethiopia and Nigeria

The performance of agrifood value chains of vital importance for smallholder farmers in developing countries. Measuring and understanding how government policies, such taxes, subsidies, minimum support prices, and government procurement, impact particular value chains is essential to minimize unintended consequences for value chain actors. This analysis of distortions in value chains in Ethiopia (sheep and goats) and Nigeria (cacao and palm oil) uses nominal rates of protection (NRPs) to measure the impact of policies on domestic prices for producers and consumers. Using the NRP methodology is effective for highlighting the significant impact of agricultural policies on prices from the local to the country level and along entire agrifood value chains.

Assessing the risk of COVID-19 in Feed the Future countries

In anticipation of the development of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine—the distribution of which will be a complex and sensitive issue—governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. Problematically, however, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. The most widely used dataset by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (Dong, Du, and Gardner 2020), for example, does not include subnational data for Feed the Future’s 12 target countries in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) and South Asia: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Uganda. For this reason, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to correlate Demographic and Health Survey data from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with geospatial data in order to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators based on which potential risk hotspots were identified. This summarizes the study’s analysis in the 12 Feed the Future countries and across subnational administrative units within each country.

Conceptual framework for food systems for diets and nutrition: Country food system fact sheet: Ethiopia

This fact sheet is organized to reflect the status and/or trends of different components in the framework for food systems for diets and nutrition based on a selection of indicators for each of the domains. The indicators have been selected for their orientation toward the goal of better quality diets; their contribution to assessment of the situation at national scale; their standardized use of data and method of construction which permit crosscountry comparison; their construction based on routinely collected, publicly-accessible data or reports available for a wide range of countries. The latter implies most indicators are based on data housed by international organizations rather than national statistics.

Assessing the risk of COVID-19 in Ethiopia

As COVID-19 vaccines are becoming available, governments will need to assess the number and location of the most vulnerable people within their populations. However, problematically, tracking data for most low- and middle-income countries are only available at the national level. To support the COVID-19 relief effort, the Gender, Climate Change, and Nutrition Integration Initiative (GCAN) was commissioned to develop a subnational dataset of key COVID-19 risk indicators and potential risk hotspots.

A digital agricultural advisory services platform to boost adoption of improved technologies and practices in Ethiopia

Despite a rapidly growing enthusiasm for the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in developing country agriculture, many questions remain on the effectiveness of ICT-based approaches. In the case of Ethiopia, an IFPRI-led and PIM-supported study highlighted the benefits of a large-scale video-mediated approach for agricultural advisory services. The Government of Ethiopia used these results to make a significant investment in digitizing agricultural advisory services.

Urban food environments through the lens of adolescents in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

In a recent study, adolescents living in Addis Ababa reported that food safety and affordability were their top concerns when making food purchases. Nutrition was a secondary concern: the students reported that even if the food sold were healthy, they would not purchase it if the vendor or outlet did not appear clean. Packaged foods were often perceived as healthy choices among the adolescents because they have labels featuring information such as expiry dates and the packaging is perceived to protect these foods from germs. Involving adolescents and their families in future research, programming, and interventions can help convey messages about the importance of nutrition. Providing clean, affordable, and healthy food options in and around schools can help ensure adolescents are able to choose and consume foods that meet all these important criteria. Ensuring that the food-based dietary guidelines under devel-opment in Ethiopia are used to provide nutrition education could help adolescents apply the guidelines in their daily life.

Short-term evidence on wellbeing of rural Ethiopian households during the COVID-19 pandemic

In Ethiopia, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, the first known case of coronavirus arrived in mid-March (on March 13, 2020), weeks after the pandemic had spread rapidly in parts of Europe and the United States. The government swiftly imposed restrictions to slow the spread of the virus, closing schools (on March 16, 2020), limiting travel and encouraging people to remain at home. Such restrictions were needed to keep the pandemic from overwhelming a healthcare system with limited capacity to respond to an infectious disease outbreak. Only limited information is available about the effect of these restrictions on economic activity, food security and livelihoods in Ethiopia. A survey of residents of Addis Ababa conducted in May 2020 found that more than half of households reported lower-than-expected incomes and more than one third were extremely stressed about the situation. These results further showed that poorer households were more severely affected, although the food security situation in Addis, while declining, was not yet dire.

Capturing the productive use dividend: Valuing the synergies between rural electrification and smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia

This report examines six agricultural production and processing opportunities for rural areas: horticulture irrigation, grain milling, injera baking, milk cooling, bread baking, and coffee washing. Collectively, these areas have the potential to produce US$4 billion in annual value using electric appliances by 2025. Supplying the appliances is itself a US$380 million investment opportunity. These six areas can also produce an additional US$22 million annual revenue stream for the utility by 2025, as the utility can sell more units of power with the same capital investment in rural areas. This revenue would help reduce the cost of providing power from both grid extension and minigrids. Realizing the economic and livelihood benefits of productive uses requires concerted national efforts linking agriculture and electrification. A national productive use program should address barriers and channel funding to the highest-need areas, helping to scale uptake rapidly. Immediate next steps are to study demand more closely, pilot several projects, and convene actors from different sectors to build a national vision and strategy

Synopsis: Accelerating progress in improving diets and nutrition in Ethiopia

Ethiopia has witnessed significant reductions in child mortality, undernutrition and communicable diseases, but more substantial and faster progress is still needed. The rise in overweight and obesity and in non-communicable diseases, particularly in urban areas, is alarming and requires urgent policy and programmatic attention. Unhealthy diets are the drivers of both forms of malnutrition and are the underlying cause of significant proportion of communicable and non-communicable diseases. Maintaining the relatively high breastfeeding practices and increasing the diversity of diets will be critical. Implementation of effective nutrition messaging that shapes consumer behavior to adopt healthy dietary patterns, while bridging gaps in reach and quality of nutrition messaging is warranted. The health extension program that is the cornerstone of the health sector transformation may need to be redesigned in a way that improves reach, quality, and minimize the risk of burnout of frontline health workers. Interventions focusing on making healthy diets affordable, accessible and available are urgently needed.

The effects of SPIR Interventions on nutrition and childcare: Evidence from the SPIR midline survey

Ethiopia has made major strides in improving nutrition in the past two decades; the prevalence of stunting decreased considerably from 58% in 2000 to 38% in 2016 and further to 37% in 2018.1 While there is no consensus on the underlying causes of this improvement—although substantial increases in income and education surely contributed—there is consensus that more must be done to maintain the momentum. In particular, a number of infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices can be improved. While breastfeeding initiation is nearly universal, many children are not exclusively breastfed until they are 6 months old, which is the recommended practice. Similarly, few children age 6–23 months meet the minimum acceptable dietary standards. This brief presents evidence on the impact of the SPIR project on key IYCF practices at the time of the midline survey.

The effects of poultry and unconditional cash transfers on livelihoods outcomes: Evidence from the SPIR midline survey

Recent policy debates have focused renewed international attention on poultry as an asset that is widely accessible to women and has low start-up costs, increasing its potential to have significant positive welfare effects for poor households in developing countries. In 2016, Bill Gates promoted investment in chickens as a development strategy that would meaningfully increase incomes for poor women.1 In response, Chris Blattman suggested that large cash grants of the kind provided by Give Directly (Haushofer and Shapiro 2016) may be more effective at enhancing outcomes, given heterogeneity in households’ needs and capacity to raise chickens.2 This learning brief reports on evidence from an ongoing impact evaluation of a complementary program to Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, Phase 4 (PSNP4), called SPIR (Strengthen PSNP4 Institutions and Resilience) in rural Ethiopia, in which a cross-randomization of interventions providing poultry and cash transfers allows us to generate evidence highly relevant to this debate. The SPIR Development Food Security Activity (DFSA) in Ethiopia is a five-year program (2016–2021) supporting implementation of the PSNP4 as well as complementary livelihood, nutrition, gender, and natural resource management activities intended to strengthen the program and expand its impacts. Under funding from USAID’s Office of Food for Peace (FFP) and in close collaboration with the Government of Ethiopia, World Vision leads implementation of the SPIR DFSA in partnership with the Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara (ORDA) and CARE. SPIR DFSA targets more than 500,000 PNSP clients in 15 of the most vulnerable woredas in Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia. SPIR DFSA also incorporates a substantial learning agenda intended to use evidence to improve the design of the DFSA, provide feedback to strengthen its delivery, and draw lessons both for local gov-ernment and other national and international stakeholders. World Vision, ORDA, and CARE provide guidance on the implementation of the learning agenda. IFPRI leads the planning and execution of the learning agenda activities. This learning brief reports midline effects of two specific dimensions of SPIR programming, a poultry package and a one-time cash transfer randomized to women in particularly poor households, on a set of livelihood outcomes measured in the midline survey conducted between July and October 2019.

Synopsis: Geography of public service delivery in rural Ethiopia

Geography has been shown to be an important determinant of economic development. Remote areas tend to be poorer due to higher transaction costs for trade or inhospitable environments. In this study, we show that remote areas in rural Ethiopia are also disadvantaged in their access to public service delivery. Relying on large household surveys, we assessed the association between exposure to agriculture and health extension and two measures of remoteness: (1) the distance of service centers to district capitals; and (2) the distance of households to service centers (i.e., the last mile). We found that villages located farther away from district capitals were less likely to receive agricultural extension services than other villages. In contrast, exposure to health extension services did not vary across more and less connected villages. This difference between the two sectors could be due to the fact that more remote villages tend to have fewer agriculture extension workers who also put in fewer hours into their work than their peers. We did not find similar evidence in the health sector. Finally, for both sectors, we found that the last mile matters: more remote households within villages were less likely to receive both types of extension services.

Rising cereal prices in Ethiopia: An assessment and possible contributing factors

Nominal cereal prices in Ethiopia in July 2019 were significantly higher than the year before – maize prices had risen by 32 percent; sorghum by 39 percent; teff by 35 percent; and wheat by 2 percent. Moreover, there is anecdotal evidence that nominal cereal prices have increased rapidly since. A number of factors help explain this pattern: Overall inflation has been high both for food and non-food items. This general high inflation is linked to macro factors related to broad money and credit growth; overall changes in prices for inputs, labor, and transport have important impacts on production costs for agricultural products, thereby putting upward pressure on prices. However, controlling for inflation, real prices are close to average real prices over the last ten years, indicating little change in supply relative to demand; seasonality is important in Ethiopian cereal markets, with mostly higher prices in August and September, just before the new Meher harvest comes in. The current (September 2019) high prices for food are partly a seasonal phenomenon; there are no signs of increased real marketing costs. Nonetheless, given their importance for food security, close monitoring and assessments of the functioning of Ethiopia’s food markets remains necessary.

Promoting fruit and vegetable intake in urban Ethiopia: An experiment using video-based communication

This pilot experiment aims to address the knowledge gaps on the nutrition and health benefits of fruits and vegetables to help find ways to increase both consumption frequency and amounts at the house-hold level. While there are already commendable efforts in the country to improve overall nutrition knowledge through behavioral change communication, so far, the interventions focus on rural areas and are limited to conveying recommended behaviors with little or no emphasis on the mechanisms by which diet quality can improve nutrition and health outcomes. This experiment will be the first of its kind to introduce systematic nutrition behavioral change communication in urban Ethiopia with an enhanced intervention to communicate the mechanisms through which the consumption of fruits and vegetables can lead to better nutrition and health outcomes.

Opportunities and challenges in field data validation and corroboration: Matching household survey data with project monitoring data in Ethiopia

The application of digital tools to agricultural extension and advisory services has attracted considerable attention in recent years. Among the many advantages it offers is the ability to capture and analyze large amounts of data on farmers, their farms, crops, and fields; and the choices they make about input use, technologies, management practices, and marketing.

The (marginal) cost of technology adoption: A cost-effectiveness analysis of Digital Green’s video-mediated agricultural extension approach in Ethiopia

Since 2014, Digital Green and the Government of Ethiopia have been piloting a video-mediated approach to agricultural extension provision. The approach aims to increase the growth rate of yields and output for major food staples by encouraging farmers to adopt productivity-enhancing agricultural technologies and practices. The video-mediated extension approach is highlighted by three integrated components: production of short, localized video content, screening videos in group sessions facilitated by extension agents, and verification of the uptake of the target technologies and practices. A key tenet of this approach is its ability to increase adoption rates at a relatively low cost per farmer.

Synopsis: Ethiopia's spatial and structural transformation: Public policy and drivers of change

This research note evaluates Ethiopia’s demographic shift over the last four decades while also evaluating potential urbanization trends 20 years into the future.1 Propelling Ethiopia’s urban growth is new secondary city development, ongoing population growth in small towns, and improved access to markets. In order to understand how secondary city growth is contributing to urbanization, we update the agglomeration index for the country. In addition, we look at recent patterns of domestic migration. Reviewing the government’s investment strategy in industrial parks and sugar factories, we explore current plans for industrial zones in Ethiopia. In examining the scope for their success, we consider the key role that government policy will need to play in terms of overall investment in infrastructure, as well as the major implications of macro-economic and trade policies to motivate increased private sector investment in Ethiopia’s industrial sector.

Can Ethiopia feed itself by 2050? Estimating cereal self-sufficiency to 2050

Producing adequate food to meet global demand by 2050 is widely recognized as a major challenge, particularly for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Godfray et al. 2010; Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012; van Ittersum et al. 2016). Increased price volatility of major food crops (Koning et al. 2008; Lagi et al. 2011), an abrupt surge in land area devoted to crop production in recent years (Grassini et al. 2013) and extensive labour force mobilization (NEPAD 2013) reflect the powerful forces underpinning this challenge to increase production. The 2008 price spikes triggered the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to issue warnings, noting the 60–70 percent increase in food production by 2050 that will be needed to meet the escalating food demand for the expected 9.7 billion global population. In this policy brief we focus on the feasibility to meet such increase by 2050 with scenarios of population increase and dietary changes under current climate conditions. Current climate variability is very high in sub-Saharan Africa causing significant yield variations across years (e.g., Shiferaw et al. 2014; www.yieldgap.org). Climate change will further add to the food production challenge (Porter et al. 2014; Vermeulen et al. 2012; McKersie 2015). Smallholder farmers will need to adapt to a changing climate while at the same time they are expected to increase production in such way that it has a minimum effect on the drivers of climate change, i.e. mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Factsheet on capacities in agricultural higher education: Jimma University, Ethiopia College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

Credible quantitative and qualitative information on existing capacities in agricultural higher education agencies in Africa are crucial for strategic planning, policy formulation, setting priorities and benchmarks, measuring progress toward benchmarks, and identifying capacity gaps. Decisionmakers require a solid understanding of existing staffing and student capacities in the higher education sector, as well as in the wider agricultural innovation systems in Africa south of the Sahara. Access to such information supports effective policymaking to address capacity issues in higher education, agricultural research, extension, and other areas. Such information remains extremely limited, however. To fill this need, the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI/IFPRI) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) initiated a partnership to pilot the collection of this type of data for RUFORUM’s member universities. This factsheet presents the available data results for Africa University, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources. An online version of the data is available via the Portal on Agricultural Capacity in RUFORUM Universities: www.asti.cgiar.org/RUFORUM.

Factsheet on capacities in agricultural higher education: Mekelle University, Ethiopia College of Veterinary Medicine

Credible quantitative and qualitative information on existing capacities in agricultural higher education agencies in Africa are crucial for strategic planning, policy formulation, setting priorities and benchmarks, measuring progress toward benchmarks, and identifying capacity gaps. Decisionmakers require a solid understanding of existing staffing and student capacities in the higher education sector, as well as in the wider agricultural innovation systems in Africa south of the Sahara. Access to such information supports effective policymaking to address capacity issues in higher education, agricultural research, extension, and other areas. Such information remains extremely limited, however. To fill this need, the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI/IFPRI) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) initiated a partnership to pilot the collection of this type of data for RUFORUM’s member universities. This factsheet presents the available data results for Africa University, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources. An online version of the data is available via the Portal on Agricultural Capacity in RUFORUM Universities: www.asti.cgiar.org/RUFORUM.

Factsheet on capacities in agricultural higher education: Haramaya University, Ethiopia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences

Credible quantitative and qualitative information on existing capacities in agricultural higher education agencies in Africa are crucial for strategic planning, policy formulation, setting priorities and benchmarks, measuring progress toward benchmarks, and identifying capacity gaps. Decisionmakers require a solid understanding of existing staffing and student capacities in the higher education sector, as well as in the wider agricultural innovation systems in Africa south of the Sahara. Access to such information supports effective policymaking to address capacity issues in higher education, agricultural research, extension, and other areas. Such information remains extremely limited, however. To fill this need, the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI/IFPRI) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) initiated a partnership to pilot the collection of this type of data for RUFORUM’s member universities. This factsheet presents the available data results for Africa University, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources. An online version of the data is available via the Portal on Agricultural Capacity in RUFORUM Universities: www.asti.cgiar.org/RUFORUM.

Synopsis: Farmers’ grain storage and losses in Ethiopia: Measures and associates

Storage losses of crops on the farm are often assumed to be an important contributor to presumed large post-harvest losses in developing countries. However, reliable and representative estimates on these losses are often lacking. We study farmers’ storage decisions and self-reported storage losses for grain crops based on two recent large-scale household surveys conducted in major grain producing areas in Ethiopia. We show that a relatively large share of grain production is stored, mainly for own consumption, and that storage technologies are rudimentary. We find that farmers’ self-reported storage losses amount to an average of 4 percent of all grains stored and 2 percent of the total harvest. These storage losses are shown to differ significantly by some households’ socio-economic characteristics and wealth and also by crop and prevailing humidity levels. We further see strong spatial heterogeneity in storage losses, being significantly higher in the southwestern part of the country. Efforts to scale up the adoption of improved storage technologies to reduce storage losses at the farm level should take into consideration these characteristics.

Ethiopia: Agricultural R&D indicators factsheet update

This country factsheet presents key agricultural R&D indicators in a highly accessible visual display. The publication also features a more in-depth analysis of some of the key challenges that the country’s agricultural R&D system is facing, and the policy options to address these challenges.

Affordability of fruits and vegetables in Ethiopia

As in many other low-income countries, fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption is very low in Ethiopia. Consequently, micronutrient deficiencies, such as for Vitamin A, are widespread, and more than half of young Ethiopian children suffer from anemia. Efforts to increase FV consumption in Ethiopia have focused on improving consumer knowledge of the health benefits of FV and other nutritious foods. While these interventions have been successful in improving knowledge and ultimately improving dietary diversity, diets remain extremely monotonous across the country. Recent international research in this area suggest that high relative prices of FVs could be another important constraint. To shed more light on this issue, we assess the affordability of FVs in Ethiopia. Using expenditure and price data collected by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, we find that the average Ethiopian household would have to spend 11 percent of their income to meet the international recommendation of two servings of fruits and three servings of vegetables per person per day. This share is more than 2.5 times higher for households in the poorest quintile, indicating that meeting these guidelines is currently out of reach for the poorest households in Ethiopia. More investments and research attention to the production of fruits and vegetables is urgently needed to improve supplies and, hence, their affordability.

Ethiopian universal electrification development strategies

This results brief provides an overall picture of the renewable energy potential for power generation in Ethiopia and demonstrates to which extent renewable energy technologies can be integrated into the Ethiopian power sector. The results suggest that it would be attractive for the country to move forward on diversified, targeted renewable energy production, including solar PV and wind energy, to achieve universal electrification goals while also improving energy security.

Improvements in living conditions in Ethiopia between 2000 and 2016: Evidence from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey data

This research shows how basic living conditions have improved markedly since 2000, albeit somewhat unevenly, with urban areas witnessing the greatest improvements. Still, better access to safe drinking water and proper toilets, together with better housing quality, are indicative that the benefits of economic growth are reaching rural areas.

What works in the real world? Synthesis brief

After several years of growing political commitment, with more and more pledges and declarations and an increasing focus on data and on evidence, the international nutrition community has come to recognise the power of narrative. Knowledge that is practically useful needs to encompass a lot more than data and evidence – it needs to include experience. To meet this growing demand for experiential learning, Transform Nutrition developed the Stories of Change (SoC) initiative. The goal was to systematically assess and analyse drivers of change in six high-burden countries – Bangladesh, India (Odisha), Ethiopia, Nepal, Senegal, and Zambia – that have had some success in accelerating improvements in nutrition. From 2014–16, country teams undertook analysis of changes over time in nutrition outcomes, in nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive drivers, and changes in nutrition-relevant policies and programs. Semi-structured key informant interviews (434 in total) were carried out with a range of stakeholders at different levels.

Strengthening resilience of rural households through improved social protection

Millions of very poor people who depend on agriculture are frequently exposed to shocks due to extreme weather and volatile prices. Even with strong agricultural growth, an estimated 400 million people will remain at risk of hunger in 2030. Conflict and climate change may further increase these numbers. Adequate social protection programs help vulnerable people address immediate needs, protect and augment their assets and human capital, and move out of poverty. PIM’s research on social protection, led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in partnership with governments and development agencies, has supported increased investment in social protection programs, reaching roughly 8 million beneficiaries in Ethiopia, more than one million beneficiaries in Bangladesh, and more than one million in Tanzania.

The rising costs of nutritious foods in Ethiopia

Given the high prevalence of undernutrition among children in low income countries and the associated high human and eco-nomic costs (Hoddinott et al. 2013), improving nutritional out-comes must be an urgent priority. Improving nutrition is high on the policy agenda of the government of Ethiopia, as stated in the Growth and Transformation Plan II, which aims to reduce young child stunting levels from 40 percent in 2014/15 to 26 percent in 2019/2020. Lack of access to diverse diets is one of the underlying factors contributing to chronic undernutrition (Arimond and Ruel 2004, UNICEF 1998). Despite recent improvements, child stunting in Ethiopia remains widespread (CSA and ICF International 2017). Moreover, Ethiopian children consume one of the least diverse diets in sub-Saharan Africa (Hirvonen 2016). At the household level, food consumption baskets are dominated by cereals and pulses, while the consumption of animal-source foods and fruits and Vitamin A-rich vegetables is rare, especially in rural areas.1 Such monotonous diets are regarded as a major contributor to non-communicable diseases in Ethiopia (Melaku et al. 2016). Recent research suggests that the poor dietary diversity in ru-ral areas can be explained, at least partly, both by limited knowledge about the health benefits of diverse diets and by poor access to food markets. Households in areas in which food crop production is not very diverse but which have good access to mar-kets are found to have more diverse diets than do households in such areas but which have poor access to markets and, so, de-pend primarily on own-production for the food they consume.2 Yet, even with sufficient access to markets and knowledge on the benefits of diverse diets, poor households may simply be un-able to afford nutritionally rich foods (Warren and Frongillo 2017). Indeed, prices and affordability of nutritious foods remains a neglected area of research in efforts to understand poor dietary diversity in Ethiopia and elsewhere.3 In the analysis described here, we explore how prices and, consequently, the affordability of nutritious food have changed over the last decade in Ethiopia.

Synopsis: An assessment of the livestock economy in mixed crop-livestock production systems in Ethiopia

The livestock sub-sector has contributed little to the remarkable economic growth recorded in Ethiopia in the last decade. In an effort to stimulate livestock production, the Ethiopian government has recently recognized livestock as an important strategic sub-sector in which to invest. Unlike most studies that focus purely on aspects of livestock production, this study provides a detailed descriptive assessment of the livestock production and marketing behavior of smallholder mixed crop-livestock farmers.

Synopsis: The Sustainable Land Management Program in the Ethiopian highlands: An evaluation of its impact on crop production

Agricultural productivity in Ethiopia’s highlands, the country’s breadbasket, is threatened by severe land degradation. To mitigate ongoing soil erosion and soil nutrient loss, the government of Ethiopia initiated the Sustainable Land Management Program (SLMP). We evaluated the program’s impact on the value of agricultural production in select kebeles (administrative sub-districts) in which it was implemented using a two-round survey of farm households.

Synopsis: The impact of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme on the nutritional status of children: 2008–2012

Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is a large-scale social protection intervention aimed at improving food security and stabilizing asset levels. The PSNP contains a mix of public works employment and unconditional cash and food transfers. It is a well-targeted program; however, several years passed before payment levels reached the intended amounts. The PSNP has been successful in improving household food security. However, children’s nutritional status in the localities where the PSNP operates is poor, with 48 percent of children stunted in 2012. This leads to the question of whether the PSNP could improve child nutrition. We examine the impact of the PSNP on children’s nutritional status over the period 2008–2012. Doing so requires paying particular attention to the targeting of the PSNP and how payment levels have evolved over time. Using inverseprobability-weighted regression-adjustment estimators, we find no evidence that the PSNP reduces either chronic undernutrition (height-for-age z-scores, stunting) or acute undernutrition (weight-for-height z-scores, wasting). While we cannot definitively identify the reason for this non-result, we note that child diet quality is poor. We find no evidence that the PSNP improves child consumption of pulses, oils, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, or animalsource proteins. Most mothers have not had contact with health extension workers nor have they received information on good feeding practices. Water practices, as captured by the likelihood that mothers boil drinking water, are poor. These findings, along with work by other researchers, have informed revisions to the PSNP. Future research will assess whether these revisions have led to improvements in the diets and anthropometric status of preschool children

The case of Ethiopia’s enjera markets: Synopsis: Food processing, transformation and job creation

Given the importance of agriculture in developing economies, food processing industries often dominate employment and value addition in the industrial sector in these settings. For example, it is estimated that the food processing industry in Ethiopia employs one million people, around 2 percent of the economically active population. However, the way in which Ethiopia’s food processing industry is changing and how it functions is little understood. We study the markets in urban Ethiopia for commercial ready-to-eat enjera, the traditional staple pancake of the country. We find that these commercial enjera markets are rapidly growing, employing more than 100,000 people in urban Ethiopia, many of whom are women. Moreover, enjera is now being prepared by mixing flour from locally produced teff with that of imported rice, thus absorbing an important part of the rapidly growing rice imports (almost 200 million USD in 2015) to the country and leading to higher profits for those enterprises en

Synopsis: How should rural financial cooperatives be best organized? Evidence from Ethiopia

What is the optimal size and composition of rural financial cooperatives (RFCs)? With this broad question in mind, we characterize alternative formations of RFCs and the implications of each in improving the access of rural households to financial services, including savings, credit, and insurance services. We find that some features of RFCs have varying implications for delivering various financial services. The size of RFCs is found to have a nonlinear relationship with the various financial services RFCs provide. We also show that compositional heterogeneity among members, including diversity in wealth, is associated with higher access to credit services, while this has limited effects on the savings behavior of members. Similarly, social cohesion among members is strongly associated with higher access to financial services. These empirical descriptions suggest that the optimal size and composition of RFCs may vary across the different domains of financial services that they are designed to facilitate. This evidence provides suggestive insights on how to ensure financial inclusion among smallholders, a priority among agricultural sector policy makers in developing countries, including Ethiopia. The results also provide some insights for the design of rural microfinance operations as they seek to satisfy members’ demand for various financial services.

Synopsis: The rapid expansion of herbicide use in smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia: Patterns, drivers, and implications

We use qualitative and quantitative information from a number of datasets to study the adoption patterns and labor productivity impacts of herbicide use by farmers in Ethiopia. We find a four-fold increase in the value of herbicides imported into Ethiopia over the last decade, primarily by the private-sector. Adoption of herbicides by smallholders has grown rapidly over this period, with the application of herbicides on cereals doubling to more than a quarter of the area under cereals between 2004 and 2014. Relying on data from a large-scale survey of producers of teff, the most widely grown cereal in Ethiopia, we find significant positive labor productivity effects of herbicide use of between 9 and 18 percent. We show that the adoption of herbicides is strongly related to proximity to urban centers, levels of local rural wages, and access to markets. All these factors have changed significantly over the last decade in Ethiopia, explaining the rapid take-off in herbicide adoption. The significant increase in herbicide use in Ethiopia has important implications for rural labor markets, potential environmental and health considerations, and capacity development for the design and effective implementation of regulatory policies on herbicides.

Synopsis: Non-farm income and labor markets in rural Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s economy is rapidly transforming. However, the extent to which this is affecting off-farm income and labor markets in rural areas is not well understood. Based on a large-scale household survey in high potential agricultural areas of the country, we find that total off-farm income (defined as wage and enterprise income) makes up 18 percent of total rural income. Wage income in both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors accounts for 10 percent of total household income, equating in importance to livestock income. We show off-farm income and wage income to be relatively more important for the poor and for female and youth-headed households. We further find that real rural wages increased by 54 percent over the last decade, mostly driven by high agricultural growth. While this wage increase is good news for the poor, it also induces adjustments in agricultural production practices, including increased adoption of labor-substituting technologies, such as herbicides.

Synopsis: How big are post-harvest losses? Evidence from teff

Based on a unique large-scale data set on teff production and marketing, Ethiopia’s most important cash crop, we study post-harvest losses in rural-urban value chains, specifically between producers and urban retailers in the capital, Addis Ababa. We analyze the structure of the value chain and rely on self-reported losses by different value chain agents (farmers, wholesale traders, and retailers). We estimate that post-harvest losses in the most prevalent pathway in the rural-urban value chain, amount to between 2.2 and 3.3 percent of total harvested quantities. The variation in this figure depends on the storage facilities used and on assumed losses during transport at the farm. These losses are significantly lower than is commonly assumed for staple foods, possibly because of the rather good storage characteristics of teff due to its low moisture content. These findings, nonetheless, point to the need to gather further solid evidence on post-harvest losses in staple foods in these settings to ensure appropriate policies and investments

Video-based agricultural extension: Analysis of a pilot project in Ethiopia

Since 2014, Digital Green and the Government of Ethiopia have been piloting a project to introduce a community-centric video approach to agricultural extension provision.1 Digital Green’s approach has the potential to transform extension in Ethiopia via a fairly simple impact pathway. By providing a cost-effective ap-proach to information dissemination, video-based extension can in-crease the adoption rate of productivity-enhancing agricultural technologies and practices by smallholder farmers, including in-creased adoption by women. The Digital Green approach could also improve data collection and analysis. This note, based on a more detailed project report,2 summarizes findings and recom-mendations that point the way to expanded use of video-based ag-ricultural extension.

Synopsis: Row planting teff in Ethiopia: Impact on farm-level profitability and labor allocation

Improved technologies are increasingly being promoted to farmers in sub-Saharan-African countries to address low agricultural productivity in their staple crops. There is, however, a lack of evidence on how adoption affects farmers’ labor use and profitability at the farm level, as well as the importance gender roles play. This paper analyses the labor and profitability impact of the recently introduced row planting technology in teff production in Ethiopia. Based on agronomic evidence in experimental settings, the government of Ethiopia has focused extension efforts on promoting the widespread uptake of row planting to address low teff yields, replacing the traditional broadcasting method of planting teff. Using an innovative Randomized Controlled Trial set-up, we show that the implementation of row planting at the farm level significantly increases total labor use, but not teff yields, relative to broadcast planting, resulting in a substantial drop in labor productivity when adopting row planting. Moreover, the implementation of row planting has important consequences for inter- and intra-household labor allocation, with relatively more use of non-family labor. The adoption of row planting was further found not to be profitable for farmers in the first year of the promotion cam-paign, seemingly explaining the limited success in up-scaling the adoption of the technology by farmers in the second year of the program.

Ethiopia country brief

The ‘Stories of Change in Nutrition’ research project aims to generate experiential learning for countries with high burdens of malnutrition to start to fill gaps in our understanding of how policies to address nutrition are made and how these policies play out in implementation in particular contexts. This brief focuses on three overlapping ‘Stories of Change’: We first discuss the evolution of Ethiopia’s nutrition sensitive agendas within the agriculture, social protection, and health sectors over the past decade. The second story details the ongoing alignment of national nutrition agendas with the capacities to implement them at zone and woreda levels. The third story centres on the challenges communities face in engaging with nutrition programming in a changing, but increasingly limiting, environment. The objective of this brief is to draw attention to the real world challenges of implementing nutrition sensitive agendas and provide recommendations for how to move forward with nutrition sensitive programming.

Synopsis: Cities and agricultural transformation in Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Due to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, many more farmers are now living in rural hinterlands in relatively close proximity to cities. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. In particular, we analyze data from teff farmers in major teff producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers located closer to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. This urban proximity has a strong and significant effect on these aspects of teff production, possibly related to the use of more formal factor markets, lower transaction costs in crop production and marketing, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find a strong and positive relationship between rural population density increases and agricultural transformation – increased population density seems to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries

Synopsis: Economy-wide impacts of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)

The findings from this study reveal that, on an economy-wide ba-sis, the benefits of PSNP significantly exceed the cost of PSNP transfers. New income created by PSNP benefits households that do not receive cash transfers; these non-beneficiaries benefit as markets transmit PSNP impacts to them through local and national markets. Documenting the total benefits, including benefits to non-beneficiaries, is critical to garner support for PSNP. Our analysis shows that PSNP achieves both social and productive goals by raising income in beneficiary households while stimulating local and national production. This should be good news to both finance and social welfare ministries.

Synopsis: Agricultural prices during drought in Ethiopia

We analyze the evolution of crop and livestock producer prices and wages of unskilled laborers in Ethiopia over the January 2014 to January 2016 period, during which time the country was massively impacted by El Niño triggered droughts. The analyses reveal no evidence of widespread adverse price effects of the drought in the labor and cereal markets. Real prices of the major cereals were lower at the beginning of 2016 compared to two years earlier, especially for maize, sorghum, and wheat, the crops that make up the major source of calories in the areas that were most hit by the drought. Conversely, prices of root crops and pulses increased. Given the large importance attached to cereal consumption, the overall real food consumption basket price declined compared to two years earlier, the decline being lower in drought-affected areas. Considering crop and livestock prices jointly reveals that livestock-cereal terms of trade declined in the worst affected areas, contrasting considerably with improvements seem in areas less affected by the drought. This contrast is mainly due to livestock prices declining faster than cereal prices in such areas. The fluctuating behavior of cereal prices since January 2015 strikingly contrasts with the situation during the major drought of 1997/98. During that period, cereal production declined by 25 percent compared to the year before, with significant simultaneous real price increases of between 15 and 45 percent.

Synopsis: Women’s empowerment in agriculture and dietary diversity in Ethiopia

Using household survey data from 2013 covering more than 7,000 households in five regions of Ethiopia, we investigate the impact of women’s empowerment in agriculture on the nutritional outcomes of children and women. We use multivariate regression methods and instrumental variable techniques to establish the relationship between women’s empowerment and the dietary diversity of women and children. The results show that the indicators for assessing women’s empowerment are all positively related to better dietary diversity for both children and women. As women’s empowerment leads to improvements in children’s and women’s dietary diversity, it follows that interventions which increase women’s empowerment contribute to improving child nutrition as well as their own well-being.

Synopsis: Does market access mitigate the impact of seasonality on child growth? Panel data evidence from northern Ethiopia

Seasonality in agricultural production continues to shape intra-annual food availability and prices in low-income countries. Using high-frequency panel data from northern Ethiopia, this study quantifies seasonal fluctuations in children's weights. In line with earlier studies, we document considerable seasonality in children’s age and height adjusted weights. While children located closer to local food markets are better nourished compared to their counterparts residing in more remote areas, their body weight is also subject to considerable seasonality. Further analysis provides evidence that children located closer to food markets consume more diverse diets than those located farther away. However, the content of these diets varies across seasons: children are less likely to consume animal source foods during the lean season that occurs between May and September in northern Ethiopia.

Synopsis: Household perception and demand for better protection of land rights in Ethiopia

This study assesses factors that explain households’ perceived land tenure insecurity and the demand for new formalization of land rights in Ethiopia. We use data from the 2013 Agricultural Growth Program survey of 7,500 households from high agricultural potential areas of Ethiopia. The results from a descriptive analysis and a logistic estimation reveal that demand for further land demarcation is positively associated with higher perception by households of tenure insecurity. Moreover, disaggregated results indicate that ownership and boundary-related disputes characterize periurban locations and economically vibrant communities, whereas perceived risk of government expropriation of land is mainly manifested in rural communities and areas where administrative land redistribution is a recent practice.

Synopsis: Agricultural growth in Ethiopia (2004-2014): Evidence and drivers

Ethiopia’s agricultural sector has recorded remarkable rapid growth in the last decade. This note documents aspects of this growth process. Over the last decade, there have been significant increases – more than a doubling – in the use of modern inputs, such as chemical fertilizers and improved seeds, explaining part of that growth. However, there was also significant land expansion, increased labor use, and Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth estimated at 2.3 percent per year. The expansion in modern input use appears to have been driven by high government expenditures on the agricultural sector, including agricultural extension, but also by an improved road network, higher rural education levels, and favorable international and local price incentives.

Synopsis: Market access, welfare, and nutrition: Evidence from Ethiopia

We estimate the impact of improved market access on household well-being and nutrition using a quasi-experimental setting in Ethiopia. We find that households in remote areas consume substantially less than households nearer to markets, they are more food insecure, and their school enrollment rates are lower. Although their diets are also less diverse, we find no significant differences in anthropometric measures. Part of these welfare differences can be attributed to lower household agricultural production in remote areas. But agricultural production differences alone do not account for all of the differences in household consumption levels for remote households. An additional contributing factor is the deteriorating terms of trade for remote households that negatively affect both the size of the agricultural surplus that these households market and the quantity of food items that they purchase. Reducing transaction costs associated with poor rural infrastructure can pay important dividends as it facilitates households’ abilities to transform marketed surpluses into consumption goods and into healthier, more diverse diets.

Synopsis: Children’s diets, nutrition knowledge, and access to markets

Chronic undernutrition in Ethiopia is widespread and many children consume highly monotonous diets. To improve feeding practices in Ethiopia, a strong focus in nutrition programming has been placed on improving the nutrition knowledge of caregivers. In this paper, we study the impact of improving nutrition knowledge within households and its complementarity with market access. To test whether the effect of nutrition knowledge on children’s dietary diversity depends on market access, we use survey data from an area with a large variation in transportation costs over a relatively short distance. This allows us to carefully assess the impact of households’ nutrition knowledge with varying access to markets, but still within similar agro-climatic conditions. We find that nutrition knowledge leads to considerable improvements in children’s diets, but only in areas with relatively good market access.

Synopsis, Childhood shocks, safety nets and cognitive skills: Panel data evidence from rural Ethiopia

Using child-level panel data from rural areas of Ethiopia, we analyze effects of both economic and non-economic shocks on child cognition skills measured after the early childhood age window. We identify that drought, in particular, reduces child cognitive skills markedly. Food price inflation during the study period and divorce also have significant adverse effects on cognition. Promisingly, we find that the safety net program established by the Ethiopian government in 2005 to protect households from the economic effects of such shocks mitigated the reduction in cognitive skills associated with these shocks

Agricultural mechanization and south-south knowledge exchange: What can Ethiopian and Kenyan policymakers learn from Bangladesh’s experience?

This note synthesizes one of the two study tour reports written by the participating African officials. This report provides observations made by participants from Ethiopia and Kenya, the two East African countries with participants on the tour.

Synopsis, Agricultural mechanization in Ethiopia: Evidence from the 2015 Feed the Future survey

In this research note, we provide a preview of results from a study of agricultural mechanization in Ethiopia. Our research shows that 9 percent of farmers in the Feed the Future regions of Ethiopia used mechanization at some point during the agricultural year 2014/15. We find that mechanized ploughing was most widespread (5 percent), while mechanized threshing and harvesting was reported by 3 and 2 percent of households, respectively. We further examine the uptake of different forms of mechanization through a number of associations. The results show that farm size and rural wages are positively associated with the adoption of mechanization, while remoteness is negatively linked. These findings suggest that as Ethiopia’s economy transforms and leads to higher rural wages, as well as with further development of its infrastructure, more demand for mechanized agricultural services will likely arise. Having policies that actively assure widespread availability of appropriate mechanized services at low cost, seem likely to benefit Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation.

Synopsis, Diet transformation in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s food economy is transforming fast. To better understand this ongoing process, we analyze changes in food consumption that have happened over the period between 1996 and 2011, relying on four rounds of nationally representative household data. The main findings are as follows: First, the share of food in overall expenditures is declining. Second, quantities consumed per capita are increasing. Third, the relative importance of cereals is on the decline. Fourth, there are large differences in the cereal basket of households between rural and urban areas, indicating the importance of increasing urbanization on the food economy. Fifth, cereals – and in particular maize – remain the largest source of calories in the food basket. Sixth, there is a relative shift in consumption to more expensive foods. Seventh, purchased foods are seemingly becoming more important. Finally, there are strong differences in food consumption by income level, but all levels exhibit changes over time. This diet transformation has important implications for the food security debate and for agricultural and food policy in the country.

2015 Nutrition country profile: Ethiopia

The 193 individual country profiles capture the status and progress of all UN Member States, and the 80+ indicators include a wealth of information on child, adolescent and adult anthropometry and nutritional status, in addition to intervention coverage, food supply, economics, and demography. This tool is particularly useful for nutrition champions at the country-level, as it presents a wide range of evidence needed to assess country progress in improving nutrition and nutrition-related outcomes.

Synopsis, Cereal productivity and its drivers: The case of Ethiopia

Cereal production has exhibited unprecedented growth in Ethiopia, leading to important welfare improvements in the country. However, it is not well understood what the drivers have been of this growth and how it can be sustained. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on the contribution of improvements in productivity to growth in yields. Moreover, doubts exist on whether it is possible to sustain such growth on declining landholdings. We study cereal production using a unique large-scale survey of households and analyze productivity is-sues using stochastic frontier and data envelopment analyses, two conceptually dissimilar methods. Production frontier estimates indicate that modern inputs contribute significantly to improvements in yields. The two analytical methods used indicate that an average cereal producing household is less than half as efficient as optimally producing households, and, consequently, there is considerable opportunity for additional growth in cereal production in Ethiopia.

Synopsis, Productivity and efficiency of smallholder teff farmers in Ethiopia

A large proportion of Ethiopians derive their livelihoods from smallholder agriculture. This has provided the impetus for the smallholder agriculture-focused policies that have guided agricultural development efforts in Ethiopia over the past two decades. In this study, we investigate the productivity of smallholder teff farmers in Ethiopia, since this is an important crop in terms of cultivated area, food expenditure, and gross domestic product. Despite the remarkable growth in the production of teff in the last decade, the drivers of this growth are not well understood. In particular, there is a lack of evidence on the contribution of improvements in productivity to this growth and the link between farm size and productivity. This study employs data envelopment analysis on a recently collected large farm household survey dataset from Ethiopia to measure relative productivity and efficiency of teff farmers and to identify the factors that explain differences in relative productivity and efficiency.

Exploring child health risks of poultry keeping in Ethiopia: Insights from the 2015 Feed the Future Survey

The agricultural sector in Ethiopia and in other developing countries is increasingly asked to contribute to reducing undernutrition as well as poverty and food insecurity. Within agriculture, the livestock sector is thought to play a particularly important role in this respect, since the consumption of animal-sourced foods (ASFs) is a well-known determinant of child growth and the production of ASFs is an important source of income. However, there is growing evidence of associated health risks of poultry rearing in developing countries, particularly for young children who have been observed to directly ingest poultry feces. This is hypothesized to contribute to chronic gut damage – a condition termed environmental enteric disorder (EED) – that is widely believed to be a leading cause of child stunting in developing countries such as Ethiopia.

Synopsis: Seasonality and household diets in Ethiopia

The paper revisits seasonality by assessing how the quantity and quality of diets vary across agricultural seasons in rural and urban Ethiopia. Using unique nationally representative household level data for each month over one calendar year, we document seasonal fluctuations in household diets in terms of both the quantity of calories and the number of different food groups consumed. Households in both rural and urban areas consume less calories in the lean season, but interestingly, due to changes in the composition of diets, the diet diversity score increases towards the end of the lean season.

Synopsis: Coffee value chains on the move: Evidence from smallholder coffee farmers in Ethiopia

Important changes to Ethiopia’s coffee sector have occurred in the last decade. The adoption of improved production, harvest, and post-harvest practices has been increasing with positive impacts on coffee productivity and incomes. Upstream marketing has improved, along with large investments in processing capacity, shown by the extended coverage of wet mills. These changes seem to have been driven by greater availability of extension agents, market reform, and high international prices. However, despite these changes, yield growth has been small. Weather shocks, the prevalence of coffee diseases, lack of improved seedlings, and saving constraints has impeded uptake of improved practices, with consequent repercussions on farmers’ productivity and income.

Nutrition in Ethiopia: An emerging success story?

Research does not always provide the results that we expect. At the recent conference on improving nutrition in Ethiopia, Together for Nutrition 2015, we learnt about the rapid progress in Ethiopia in child nutritional outcomes that are linked to improved birth size and, hence, improved maternal health. However, most of the improvement in maternal health seems related to better sanitation, rather than to diet, care, or health factors.

Synopsis: An analysis of trends and determinants of child undernutrition in Ethiopia, 2000-2011

This study uses two rounds of the Ethiopian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) to statistically analyze patterns and trends in undernutrition (child growth) in Ethiopia over the period 2000 to 2011. In 2000, over half of Ethiopian preschool children were stunted and almost a third were severely stunted. However, progress against child undernutrition over the study period was solid, with stunting prevalence reduced by 1.4 percentage points per year, although progress has slowed since to 1.0 points per year between 2011 and 2014.

Synopsis: Agricultural production and children’s diets: Evidence from rural Ethiopia

We study the relationship between pre-school children’s food consumption and household agricultural production. Using a large household survey from rural Ethiopia, we find that increasing household production diversity leads to considerable improvements in children’s diet diversity. However, we also document how this non-separability of consumption and production does not hold for households that have access to food markets. These findings imply that nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions that push for market-integration are likely to be more effective in reducing undernutrition than those promoting production diversity.

Synopsis: Social networks and factor markets: Panel data evidence from Ethiopia

In the absence of well-established factor markets, the roles of indigenous institutions and social networks as mobilizing factors for agricultural production can be substantial. We investigate the role of an indigenous social network in Ethiopia, the iddir, in facilitating factor market transactions among smallholder farmers. Using detailed longitudinal household survey data and employing a difference-in-differences approach, we find that iddir membership improves households’ access to factor markets. Specifically, we find that by joining an iddir network, households’ access to land, labor, and credit improves between 7 and 11 percentage points. Furthermore, our findings indicate that iddir networks crowd-out borrowing from local moneylenders (locally referred as Arata Abedari), a relatively expensive credit source, virtually without affecting borrowing from formal credit sources. These results improve our understanding of the role informal market arrangements, such as social networks, can play in mitigating factor market inefficiencies in poor rural markets. The results also have important policy implications for designing alternative policy measures which aim to improve these markets.

Synopsis: Can agricultural traders be trusted? Evidence from urban coffee markets in Ethiopia

Traditional food marketing systems in developing countries are often not trusted. In consequence, policy makers frequently try to regulate them and modern market arrangements increasingly are emerging that seek to address some of their presumed deficiencies. However, it is unclear how trustworthy these markets actually are, and if and to what extent regulation and modernization affects market governance. In this paper we look at the case of coffee in urban settings in Ethiopia to test trustworthiness along three dimensions of trade transactions – weight, quality, and the presence of illegal trade. We find that traders are relatively trustworthy on observable quality characteristics and weights. However, there is significant illegal trade (prohibited trade of export quality coffee) and a consistent pattern of over-representation of not easily observable quality characteristics. We find that modern marketing outlets or formats, including branded and packaged products, deliver higher quality at a higher price, but are no more trustworthy than traditional marketing arrangements in terms of these dimensions of trade transactions.

Synopsis: Who benefits from the rapidly increasing voluntary sustainability standards? Evidence from fairtrade and organic certified coffee in Ethiopia

Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) are rapidly increasing in global value chains. While consumers, mostly in developed countries, are willing to pay significant premiums for such standards, it is not well understood how effectively these incentives are transmitted to producing countries.

Climate adaptation and agriculture: Solutions to successful national adaptation plans

The purpose of this brief is to share insights on agriculture and NAPs with national-level decision makers in developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), multilateral agencies, UNFCCC negotiators and donors. This brief explores how countries are overcoming the biggest challenges in developing NAPs, outlines examples of successful cross-sector adaptation planning, explores influence and leverage necessary for successful NAP processes, and offers specific recommendations.