The ATI in collaboration with MoA, including LFSDP, organized ToT training workshop on the newly developed Livestock and fisheries extension strategy to regional extension experts
Livestock is an integral component of agriculture and makes almost half of the agricultural GDP in Ethiopia. However, the production and productivity compared to the potential is disproportionately low. Lack of livestock tailored extension approach is among the challenges that limited adoption of improved production practices and technologies. Hence, the ATI, in collaboration with the MoA, including the Livestock and Fishery Sector Development Project (LFSDP), developed a livestock and fisheries extension strategy and roadmap for improved extension and advisory services and validated them with stakeholders recently.The strategy and roadmap was developed through conducting assessments on the current livestock extension system, diagnosing its strengths, weaknesses, and challenges based on stakeholder feedback and desk research, and benchmarking the Ethiopian livestock extension system against relevant international best practices.
The strategy has four pillars, which includes policy and governance (establishment of an enabling environment for private sector integration through effective and inclusive policy and governance frameworks), human capacity development (improving human capability by implementing continuous skill improvement and incentivization mechanisms), content (customize extension content to address requirements of diverse production systems and commodities while enhancing its comprehensiveness), and delivery mode (incorporating innovative, digital, and multi-channel delivery methods into extension services). Cross cutting issues such as youth and gender, nutrition and climate have all been considered when developing the strategic pillars and targeted interventions.
Based on the newly developed strategy and roadmap, The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) facilitated ToT training on national livestock and fisheries extension strategy and roadmap to regional and city administration livestock and fisheries extension experts from January 25 to 26, 2024 at Adama. The objective of the training was to create awareness on the strategy and devise action plan to cascade the training to regional and city administration stakeholders. LFSDP funded the design of the strategy and road map and the TOT trainings.
In his welcome remark, Ato Endashaw Assefa, Senor expert at ATI mentioned that Ethiopia is endowed an abundant natural resource of livestock and fisheries. However, the livestock sector has been performing well below its potential compared to regional peers. There are multiple causes for the under-development of the sector, but a key issue hindering development is the lack of focus on livestock specific extension services. Therefore, this newly developed Livestock and fishery sector specific extension strategy and RoadMap believed to address this long-standing gap and to improve production and productivity.
The workshop was officially opened by Ato Melake Assefa, Livestock and Extension Directorate Executive Lead, MoA. In his opening speech, Ato Melak highlighted that Livestock and fisheries extension has not been given due attention so far, which necessitated the development of the current strategy. The existence of tailormade extension strategy is highly important to improve adoption and develop livestock sector at large. In this regard, this is the third round ToT training aiming to create awareness and cascade to stakeholders at different levels. He added that the trainings have been organized in a cluster approach, where regions and city administrations form a cluster. He assured that the Federal MoA will continue providing guidance and all the necessary support to cascade the training to relevant stakeholders at different levels.
The training covered diagnosis of the major bottlenecks, strategy overview and interventions, production system models, and 10 years extension strategy and roadmap. During the last day of the training session, participants of the workshop developed action plan on cascading the training to regional stakeholders. The training was facilitated by ATI livestock team and Livestock Extension Executive Team of MoA.
Therefore, experts drawn from Tigray, Somale, Harari, Benishangul G. and Gambela regions and Dire-dawa City trained on the subject and capacitated to cascade the training and implement the newly designed livestock and fisheries extension strategy and roadmap.
The following Pictures is Group participant of the Regional
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