• Designates 100 spots for urban agriculture
ADDIS ABABA – Addis Ababa is undertaking an online registration of applicants who opt to engage in urban agriculture while designating over 100 places for the purpose.
The urban farming aims to address the threat of agricultural products shortage due to COVID-19 and for job creation, City’s Farmers and Urban Agriculture Commission disclosed.
Approached by The Ethiopian Herald Commission’s Deputy Commissioner, Mohammed Ligani said that although urban farming is not new for Addis Ababa, the city gives due attention to develop the sector based on the agro-ecology of the city to prevent the possible shortage of such produces following the outbreak of COVID0-19.
The focus is to enable the inhabitants of the city to grow fruits and vegetables that can grow quickly. With this assignment, the city identified 100 new places suitable for urban agriculture and online registration of potential applicants is already underway, Mohammed stated.
According to the Deputy Commissioner, the urban farming focuses on developing the capacity of the available agricultural producers, allocating new places and farming closed places near schools and condominiums.
Currently, Mohammed said, over 94,000 producers are engaging in the sector producing different vegetables and fruits for their own consumption and for the market at different levels.
The urban farming project to produce for market consumption is to practice following the river banks of the city and the city
administration gives due attention to provide support of seedlings, places and necessary input.
Currently there is a plan to create hundreds of job opportunities in the sector and more by exploring available potentials of the city, Mohammed stated.
According to him, the commission has planned to create 50 thousand job opportunities by organizing job seekers and over ten thousand job opportunities were created during the past eight months in poultry farming, beekeeping, cattle fattening and agricultural crops farming.
By focusing on short-term agricultural products, the city administration aims to produce enough agricultural products to the metropolitan needs and to widen its job creation for the youth of the metropolis.
The Ethiopian Herald May 2/2020
