Ethiopia Local Network Launches Agri-BDS Roadmap with EBASPA

On 4 April 2023, AMEA’s Local Network in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Business Advisory Service Providers Association (EBASPA) launched a roadmap to improve the provision of business development services (BDS) for farmer organizations (FOs) and agricultural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Ethiopia.

 

During this event, we also welcomed our new Ethiopia Regional Network Facilitator, Desta Heyi. Desta brings over 20 years of work experience in agricultural development, including a management position for the ICCO (Cordaid) Regional Office for Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. His previous work includes SME development, access to finance and value chain development.

A big thank you to Hileena (left) for her great work in leading the Ethiopia Local Network. We welcome Desta (right) as our new facilitator.

BDS provision across all sectors faces numerous challenges of quality, accessibility and affordability, but this is particularly true of the agriculture sector. In light of this, AMEA and EBASPA, along with other stakeholders, have jointly created a roadmap that prioritizes key challenges and identifies the action steps toward addressing them. The roadmap will be implemented over the next three years (2023 – 2026) with the leadership of partners from the private, public and NGO sectors to respond to critical issues in the BDS space.

In the lead-up to this launch event, AMEA and EBASPA worked with partner organizations to articulate a vision for a thriving BDS sector that entails effective, accessible and affordable services that meet the needs of agricultural enterprises in a sustainable manner. The roadmap, which entails seven overarching milestones and various activities, attempts to address the major challenges of the agri-BDS sector. The milestones target achievement of the following:

 

  • Quality of agri-BDS provision benchmarked
  • Online portal for BDS users, providers, and other stakeholders developed
  • National agri-BDS standards developed and shared with all stakeholders
  • BDS code of ethics developed and shared with providers and potential users
  • Enabling policies and regulation for BDS improved/instituted by lobbying government bodies
  • National system to build the capacity of and certify BDS providers established
  • Varied pricing mechanisms and payment models established to incentivize FOs to pay for BDS
AMEA-EBASPA MoU signing

The roadmap was presented to participants at the launch event, who reflected on it and suggested ways their own organizations can contribute to its implementation. An MoU was signed between Mark Blackett, AMEA Network Director, and Afework Yohannes, EBASPA Board Chairperson, officially handing over ownership of the roadmap from the Network to the Association. Implementation will begin immediately with the first milestone on benchmarking the status of agri-BDS provision in Ethiopia.

Interested in learning more about our BDS roadmap work in Ethiopia? Contact Desta Heyi.

Desta Heyi, our new Regional Network Facilitator for our Ethiopia Local Network