logo 2scale
  • en
  • Partenariats
  • Mises à jour
  • À propos
  • Ressources
  • Contactez-nous
logo 2scale
  • Partenariats
  • Mises à jour
  • À propos
  • Ressources
  • Contactez-nous
  • en
Décembre 30, 2021

Leadership and community coaching for inclusive agri-business development

Cultures de base
Ethiopia

For the 2SCALE program, facilitating inclusive growth along agricultural value chains is at the core of our work! Public and private partnerships are a vehicle for inclusive agribusiness development. As partnerships evolve along different stages of the value chain, challenges and strengths are part of the process. However, we cannot ignore the central role played by our agribusiness champions who take the lead role in steering inclusive growth and coordinating the value chain.

In today’s blog, we feature one of the key Business Champions whose success is evident due to improved service delivery for Teff smallholder producers in the Kesem Union-2SCALE partnership in Central Ethiopia.

First, a Background of Kesem Union

Kesem Union is a farmer organization that aims to facilitate input and output markets for smallholder farmers. To achieve this, the Union is continually building the productive and competitive capacity of smallholder farmers. It operates in Minjar Shenkora and Berehet districts of North Shewa, Amhara regional state- two districts known for first-grade teff production in Ethiopia. The Union has a huge ambition of transforming the teff value chain. Though it has been in existence since 2005, its aggregation performance in 2019 was less than 5% of the operational areas’ marketable surplus.

However, thanks to the strong and thoughtful leadership of Amakele Zewdu, Kesem Union has improved its aggregation capacity by 100% in less than two years! 

The passion to transform Teff production in Ethiopia-Amakele’s big dream!

Amakele was born and raised in Ababora, a small village in the operational area of Kesem Union. He was keen to see teff farming, and its business modernized and transformed. Throughout his childhood, he farmed teff on his parents’ farm. Despite enjoying working on teff fields, he was always puzzled at why teff farming was not a rewarding and mechanized venture despite its high demand in Ethiopia. This is where his big dream to transform Teff production was born.

This passion led Amakele to join Kesem union as a General Manager in 2019. In this leadership position, Amakele is ambitious in how he turns around the business performance and meets the expectation of cooperatives’ members and smallholder farmers. Fortunately, in 2019 Amakele’s big debut as the unions General Manager coincided with 2SCALE’s move to support the Teff value chain in Ethiopia. 

Using 2SCALE inclusive business development as a springboard

Kesem Union continues to strengthen the capacity of smallholder farmers to produce quality teff. This is through introducing innovations that increase the productivity of teff, build the human capacity of cooperatives to skillfully increase aggregation of teff, enhance capital base through internal capitalization and reach sustainable markets through win-win agribusiness linkages. Above all, these activities require dedicated leaders who play a major role in capacity building, networking, and facilitation among the actors involved. Kesem Union through its motivated leader-Amakele- in partnership with 2SCALE has made tremendous strides in steering such activities.

To improve on service provision, Amakele has recruited two young and keen coaches who facilitate the local networking and cascade the capacity building of actors at local level. These local actors are organized into informal organizations called Agri-Business Clusters (ABCs) namely Ameti and Eranbuti. They constitute smallholder farmers, three primary cooperatives, and local government bodies. Amakele and his team empower the ABC coaches to extend service to the ABC actors.

Let’s highlight some of the major achievements under Amakele’s leadership

Introducing innovative solutions and best practices

Since 2020, Kesem union re-initiated improved certified teff seed supply to smallholder farmers through a community-based seed multiplication model. Over 21,000 smallholder farmers got access to improved seed, green innovations, and market access in 2020.

To restore soil health, vermicomposting has been introduced for farmers to improve soil health and promote organic teff production. The union has also facilitated trainings on improved agronomic practice to farmers through radio extension programs and face-to-face trainings. In addition to these, market linkages have been established with consumer cooperatives in Addis Ababa to facilitate access to markets for smallholder teff farmers. 

Improving the competitiveness of cooperatives in Teff aggregation

Kesem union has facilitated training and coaching of cooperatives in terms of agricultural marketing, cooperative business skills, and close follow-up and coaching. Such a series of engagements to discuss challenges and priority areas to build on helped cooperatives and their umbrella organization- Kesem Union to rebuild trust and improve business relationships. This led to a tremendous increase in the aggregation capacity by 100% (from 390 to 690 tons in 2020). It also contributed to the buying of share capital worth  ETB 3.2 million ($ 63,233) -the highest since the unions' establishment. 

In addition, the union has managed to generate a profit of ETB 4.6 million ($ 90,898) and paid dividends worth ETB 2.6 million ($ 51,377) to cooperatives after recovering from a loss in the previous year. These remarkable milestones helped member primary cooperatives to rebuild trust and strengthen the sense of ownership in the union compared to the years before.

Reaching low-income consumers

Strengthening the marketing capacity of the union and its primary cooperatives and creating sustainable market linkages is instrumental to improving the aggregation performance. It is through this that the partnership can reach BoP consumers, while also affirming the confidence of farmers to sustainably produce teff. 

Under Amakele's leadership, market linkages with consumer cooperatives in the city of Ethiopia have so far resulted in an exchange of 640 tons of Teff through consumer cooperatives. Through this channel, the union has managed to avail quality teff to over 19,632 Base of Pyramid (BoP) consumers. In addition, through agri-business linkages initiated with an agro processor named Love Grass, the union sold 80 tons of Teff grain and has further built a relationship to continually supply the processer in the coming seasons.

The success and acceleration of Kesem's inclusive agri-business idea are mostly linked to the leadership of a champion who has real business ambition and interest to improve the teff value chain. Successes achieved under the leadership of  Amakele, are evidence of how thought leadership can transform agribusiness value chains to become more inclusive, sustainable, and profitable.

As 2SCALE, we applause such leaders who contribute to the success of our interventions as a program!

Learn more on how the teff value chain has revolutionized over the past two years on our previous blog here: https://www.2scale.org/en/updates/improved-service-delivery-to-smallholder-farmers-through-internal-capitalization-the-experience-of-kesem-union-en

Share this update:
Suivez-nous:
Suivez-nous:
Sur ce site:
  • Partenariats
  • Mises à jour
  • À propos
  • Ressources
  • Contactez-nous
  • Paramètres de cookie
  • Privacy policy
Inscrivez-vous à notre newsletter:

Paramètres des cookies

Nous plaçons les cookies nécessaires au bon fonctionnement de ce site. Si nécessaire, des cookies analytiques et marketing sont également utilisés. Vous pouvez indiquer ci-dessous les types de cookies que vous souhaitez accepter.

Paramètres souhaités pour les cookies