ADDIS ABABA- Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) announced a five year Index- Based Crop Insurance Project for Rural Resilience Enhancement (ICPI) in Oromia State targeting smallholder farmers.
During the discussion forum with Ministry of Agriculture and Oromia Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources (OBoANR) yesterday, JICA introduced the five-year project to implement in three phases from March 2019 to February 2024 in Six Zones of Oromia State.
ICIP Rural Risk Management Team Leader, Akira Sudo told The Ethiopian Herald, after the discussion that the goal of the project is to improve the resilience of farmers by building their overall capacity.
Sudo said “the project will work on developing institutional capacity by developing resilience enhancement packages consisting of agricultural risk activities.” It will allow farmers to be resilient to weather risks such as shortage of rainfall, drought and flood collaboratively with micro financial institutions, he added.
The project targeted to cover over 15 thousand farmers in the targeted zones.
The project will cover smallholder farmers in 130 kebeles under six zonal administrations of Oromia state during the project period and there is a plan to expand to the national level.
Food Security Coordination Director with OBoANR, Solomon Begna also told The Ethiopian Herald that the crop insurance project will help smallholder farmers’ to resilient natural factors that affect agricultural products. He said that currently agriculture is affected by natural factors mainly climate change.
He argued that the project will help the farmers to resilient such factors by build their capacity. Side by side other farm management technologies will also introduce to help the farmers productivity, Solomon noted.
The Ethiopian Herald April 20, 2019
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
