Planning Meeting in Ethiopia to discuss scale-up of the Digital Green approach (December 20-21, 2014)

Digital Green and Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture have been collaborating since 2012 to pilot the Digital Green approach to improve agricultural productivity in four regions (Tigray, Oromia, Amhara and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region), reaching over 25,000 farmers till date.

The MoA organized a two-day planning meeting (December 20-21, 2014) with its leadership team, representatives from Agriculture Transformation Agency and other stakeholders to develop strategies to institutionalize the Digital Green approach within its extension system.  The meeting was held at Debre-Ziet, a beautiful resort, a few hours away from Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia.

Vinay Kumar, Chief Operating Officer, Digital Green, welcomed all the partners and outlined the objectives of the high-level convening. Ato Tesfaye, Director General of Agriculture Extension, welcomed MoA’s partnership with Digital Green and set the context for the need to institutionalize the Digital Green approach in the ministry various units and programs to ensure that it is fully internalized within Ethiopia agriculture extension system.

The participants ideated and developed strategies around four key areas:

1. – Criteria for selecting woredas (districts) and kebeles (smallest administrative unit of Ethiopia) where Digital Green should work;
2. – Scaling training for extension functionaries at various levels on aspects of the Digital Green approach
3. – Performance management system of extension functionaries
4. – Project management and content development

According to Vinay, “the richness and depth of discusssions made the meeting productive and my sense is that we were able to achieve what we set out to achieve substantially. The recommendations and operational plan will be instrumental in defining a detailed action plan.”

He goes on to add, “the fact that MoA’s senior leadership participated in the meeting over the weekend and devoted undisturbed time to this discussion affirms the Ministry commitment to its partnership with Digital Green.”

Glimpses of the event