Regional planning activities – Oromia

Progress report 1- May 23, 2012

Oromia Team- (Nigatu Alemayehu (IPMS), Ephrem Tesema (IPMS), Dawit Assefa (OARI), Abera Kettema (Livestock agency), KurabachewShewawork (OWMEB), Fanos Mekonnen (IPMS), Mulatu Wubeshet (Irrigation agronomy-E.shoa)

Day 1 (May 22, 2012)-

  • Oromia team traveled to Zonal town of East Shoa-Adama
  • Short meeting with the zonal public administration head – Ato Tesfaye Woredfa- to explain why we are there, what we intend to do at regional, zonal and district level, who we want to meet…Scheduled to give a briefing to the zonal cabinet and office heads on Friday May 26, 2012
  • Brief meeting with extension experts and livestock and health agency head to set up a zonal consultation meeting for the next day.
  • Reflection on the day’s activities, planning for our zonal activities and role division among the Oromia team.

Day 2 (May 23, 2012)

  • A quick meeting with the head of the zonal office of agriculture also deputy head of public admin. (AtoAberaDenku) to explain purpose of LIVES…… (We saw the IPMS synthesis reports in his office). AtoAbera is enthusiastic about the project and willing to support the team in any way….
  • Consultation meeting with zonal experts ( livestock, irrigation agronomy, food security, and cooperatives) to;
  • Give an overview of the LIVES project objective, implementation plan and expectations
  • confirm the commodities selected by regional experts for East Shoa
  • select potential districts for learning site
  • list actors and service providers for the selected commodities- at zonal level
  • quantify the staff expertise in the zonal office of agriculture

An overview of the LIVES project- Ephrem presented very well on the objectives and scopes of the project. Why the project limits capacity building for extension staff to only MSc/BSc and not Ph.D was raised. Nigatu responded explaining the possibility of producing more MSc staffs who work on the research gaps in the zone rather than having one PhD researcher for a longer period….

Conforming selected commodities – zonal experts agreed with the already selected commodities. However, at first there was a bit of a resistance on the beef commodity with the fear of focusing on the specialized traders and not the smallholders and the cost of production. Some experts suggested addingSmall ruminants under beef as both are produced for fattening. However, the type of intervention that will be made for cattle fattening is different from that of Small Ruminants. Thus it should be either Cattle fattening or small ruminant. Looking at the potential of small ruminants, experts decided cattle fattening remains. Apiculture was also proposed, but again, the potential of apiculture is lower than the other commodities in the zone. Therefore, Beef, Poultry, dairy and irrigated agriculture remain the commodities for East Shoa zone.

Select potential districts - Lume (around Mojo), Bora (around Koka) Dugda (around Meki) were selected as potential learning woredas for LIVES. Selection criteria the group considered and debated upon are;

  1. Livestock density and irrigation site availability
  2. Potential and capacity of producers in the area to involve in semi-commercial agriculture production (eg. technogly adoption, experience in the commodity)
  3. Non-AGP district
  4. Capacity of service providers (especially extension offices) to implement project activities
  5. Concentration of other projects/ programs in the district
  6. Activities on pipe-line from other actors
  7. Availability of market infrastructure and other infrastructure (eg.road)
  8. Agro-ecology diversity

List actors and service providers for the selected commodities- at zonal level- The zonal experts + the Oromia team sub divided in two groups- Livestock and Irrigated agriculture- to list all actors and service providers at zonal level for each commodity. The group came up with lists of actors and service providers for each commodity. For exhaustive data on actors and service providers, especially those being operated by private sector and NGOS, experts pointed as to the places we need to go to like Zonal bureau of economic and finance development trade and market agency…. The team decided that some members of the team go to these institutions to get full data of actors and service providers.

  • Reflection on Day 2 and planning for Day 3- Day went well. Discussion for commodity selection was too long- took more than two hours, but was useful.
  • Some actors (eg. Adama university) were not cooperative to give data on level of staff capacity in the Aselaagricultural college
  • On Day 3 (May 24, 2012). The team finishes some activities: list of producers and input suppliers along the commodity value chains, list of NGOs and private sectors in the value chains, level of staff capacity at zonal offices of agriculture…
  • Day 3 late afternoon the team divides into three and goes to the three districts selected. Get the required data from district until Friday afternoon. Group comes together Friday afternoon. Brief each other and prepare for Saturday’s cabinet briefing meeting