Horticulture business has been booming in Ethiopia for the last two decades now. The nation has been exporting horticulture products to North American, European, Middle East, Far East and African markets.
Though horticulture business is growing rapidly, there are challenges which are hampering the sector from fully blossoming. What does the horticulture potential in Ethiopia look like? What are the challenges affecting the sector? How could the horticulture export sector be evaluated so far? What should the government and other pertinent stakeholders do to transform the sector?
According to the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), Ethiopia has maintained 318 million USD from the sector in the Ethiopian fiscal year (which departed on July 7, 2017) and it has shown a leap by 47 million USD from the 2017/18 fiscal year .
EIC Public Relations Director, Mokennen Hailu says that flowers ($261 million) and vegetables, fruits and herbs ($57 million) were atop the horticulture export items list during last budget year.
‘‘The horticulture business is exhibiting heartening upswing from time to time. More than 100 companies have been involved in the sector which is producing and parading a spectrum of quality flowers, fruits and vegetables to the global market. The lion’s share in generating foreign currency earning goes to flower,’’ he states.
As to him, countries such as the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Germany, UAE, Belgium, Italy, Djibouti and Somalia are the major importers of Ethiopian horticulture products.
The sector has created more than 200,000 jobs so far. About 70 percent of them are women, as to EIC annual bulletin.
Mokennen underlines that practical investment policies and incentive packages have been playing pivotal role in attracting investors from different parts of the world.
According to the Central Statistics Agency (CSA), Ethiopia is endowed with favorable climate, water resource and available agriculture land. The nation has about 12,79h hectares of land conducive for horticulture business. All these blessings notwithstanding, it is only 1,600 hectares of land the nation devoted for flower production.
Taking the huge potential as an advantage, Ethiopia has been striving to enhance the horticulture sector through designing policies and strategies that could encourage local and foreign investors, though still there is a lot to be desired, the director highlights.
For his part, Kassim Mohammed, Horticulture Researcher in Addis Ababa says Ethiopia needs to harness its enormous horticulture resources through implementing agricultural mechanization schemes.
“Beyond encouraging investors, smallholding horticulture producers should also be empowered to use modern way of production techniques. They should be provided modern machineries to produce quality flowers, fruits, vegetables and herbs that could be vital for not only for local consumption but also for export trade. If so, tremendous change would be witnessed in the living standard of low-income societies,’’ Kassim indicates.
The researcher states that ravages by pests and havocs being posed by drought as well as challenges related to lack of fertilizer, finance, skilled expertise and market linkage are bottlenecks besetting the sector.
The problem is compounded by infrastructural development. It has been affecting smallholding farmers. Henceforth, in collaboration with private stakeholders the government should find ways of addressing the challenges.
‘‘Low-income communities who engage on horticulture sector should get technical and financial props and must access better market opportunities. The supply chain between local producers, purchasers and wholesalers need to be restructured. This would make producers more advantageous from their yields,’’ he points out.
As far as export trade is concerned, Kassim recommends to stakeholders to come up with quality horticulture products that could stick out in the global market. “They should strive to produce value-added commodities as well,” he recommends.
The Ethiopian Herald January 5/2020
BY TSEGAY HAGOS
