The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has received two awards in two categories at the Agri Fin ALE Awards 2021. The awards were under the category “Use of Digital Data to Serve Smallholders” and “Innovations in Public-Private Partnerships Benefiting Smallholder Farmers”.
The Agency which prioritizes its program efforts both among and within programs and organizationally, the ATA’s program work focuses on Value Chains and Systems – which will be supported by a set of cross-cutting Initiatives in order to transform the agriculture sector.
Under the first category, “Use of Digital Data to Serve Smallholders” the ATA in collaboration with Dalberg and Mercy Corps Agrifin Teams was able to create the ATA Data Hub which consolidates all existing data sources from the ATA into the Data Hub. By doing that the ATA was able to utilize the data from seven different ATA projects for more comprehensive analysis and decision making.
The ATA Data Hub was also utilized to further support the ATA’s Agriculture Commercialization Clusters of 2.5 Million Farmers, develop more detailed farmer profiles, and position the Data Hub as an open resource that can be leveraged by government ministries, private sector partners and other stakeholders in a variety of ways.
“This recognition will serve as a big boost for the Ethiopian agriculture and for the agency as it recognizes the works, we are doing to help the smallholder farmers we strive to serve.” ATA CEO Dr. Mandefro Nigussie said. “Having a tool such as 8028 which is the biggest IVR system in Africa and other similar tools such as the National Market Information System (NMIS), backed by various partnerships with various stakeholders will help assist the relentless works that are being done to improve the sector.” Dr. Mandefro also added.
The second category “Innovations in Public-Private Partnerships Benefiting Smallholder Farmers” was won for the works done in collaboration with stakeholders and partners such as MoA, Mercy Corps, Turn.io, WFP, FAO, and Plant Village by using the 8028 Farmer’s Hotline, and elocust3m tools for conducting surveys for identifying and locating the occurrence of the Desert locusts, and sending out an alert to inform or warn farmers in the nearby woredas or kebeles based on the predicted movement of the Locust.
Director of ICT for Agriculture at the ATA, Temesgen Gebeyehu for his part said “Over the past few years, the 8028 farmer’s hotline has been steadily growing and has been providing crucial information to farmers. In addition to providing support to fight off Desert locust, the platform has also been conducting voice and SMS based survey for identifying the presence of crop disease and pest infestations such as Wheat rust, Maize lethal necrosis, fall army worm and others” Temesgen also added “the platform has also been providing an important information to smallholder farmers, Development agents, and agricultural experts so that they can use to break the spread of these diseases. 8028 Farmers Hotline basically provides advisory services to smallholders’ farmers on Agronomy, livestock, and Covid-19 responses.
Launched in February 2014 in four regions, the 8028 Farmers’ Hotline currently runs on 210 phone lines and is available in five languages. The service recently surpassed the 48 million calls mark from 5.5 million registered callers. About Ethiopian Agriculture Transformation Agency The Ethiopian Agriculture The Ethiopian Agriculture Transformation Agency (the Agency or ATA) is an initiative of the Government of Ethiopia (GOE) established in 2010.
The primary aim of the Agency is to promote agricultural sector transformation by supporting existing structures of government, private sector and other non-governmental partners to address systemic bottlenecks in delivering on a priority national agenda for achieving growth and food security.
The Agency’s formation results from two years of extensive diagnostic study across eight sub-sectors of Ethiopia’s agricultural system in a highly consultative, multi-stakeholder process led by the Ministry of Agriculture. It has been modeled after similar public-sector bodies in Asia (i.e. Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, etc.) that played important roles in the growth of those national economies.
The Agency’s structure and function is focused on support to a range of partners in the agricultural sector. More specifically, the Agency has been created to respond to a core set of needs identified by the Ministry of Agriculture and its governing Transformation Council. Although it is a nationally oriented organization, in the initial stage of its work, the Agency will focus its efforts both programmatically and geographically. The ATA will be financed by GOE and also supported by a range of development partners.
The ATA is headquartered in Addis Ababa. Programmatically, the Agency will seek to identify solutions in systemic bottlenecks in both key system areas and value chains of priority cropping systems. The initial focus within the Systems Programs will be the seed sector, soil health and fertility management, cooperatives, input/output markets and extension and research.
The value chains that have been identified as the core areas of focus initially are tef, maize, wheat and pulses. In the near future the Agency will expand its work to oil seeds and rice and further in the future will begin work in the livestock sector. Solution development in these program areas will also be informed by work done in the Agency’s Special Initiatives group. This cross cutting group will ensure that the solutions developed within the other program areas are leveraging the most appropriate technologies for Ethiopia and do not have any unintended consequences.
BY HAFTU GEBREZGABIHER
The Ethiopian Herald May 16/2021
