IFAD 25th Governing Council
19 February, Rome, Italy

Your Excellency President Bage,
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

On behalf of the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, it gives me great pleasure and honor to briefly present to the distinguished delegates of the 25th anniversary session of IFAD’s Governing council a short briefing on Ethiopia’s agricultural transformation and rural development effort.

In Ethiopia, as in most developing countries, agriculture is the backbone of the economy. It accounts for about 50% of the GDP, more than 90 % of the foreign export earnings and engages over 85%of the population.

Ethiopia is endowed with immense potential of agricultural resources such as vast arable land and pastureland, water, livestock and human resources. However, the proportion of people in absolute poverty only marginally declined from 45.5% in 1995/96 to 44.2% in 1999/00. Hence, to reduce poverty by half from its current level, the economy must grow in real terms by 5.7% per annum until the year 2015.

Your Excellencies
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

The Government of Ethiopia, cognizant of the situation, is currently working towards achieving the millennium Development Goals and it is striving to bring about a rapid, all round and sustainable economic development.

The central goal of the country’s poverty Reduction Strategy is to build a free-market economic system which will enable the economy to develop rapidly, extricate it self from dependence on food aid and render the poor the main benefits of economic growth.

To achieve this objective, Ethiopia’s poverty reduction strategy consists of four major building blocks,

Agriculture Development –Led industrialization (ADLI), judiciary and civil service reform, decentralization and empowerment and capacity building. Cross-cutting issues i.e. gender, environment and population are integrated while private sector development, export development, urban development and management issues and HIV/AIDS are elements of the strategic framework for poverty reduction.

The agricultural Development – Led Industrialization (ADLI) economic strategy of the country aims at structural transformation of the economy in which a rapid growth of the agricultural sector is envisaged to raise the share of industry and social services in terms of out put and employment.

In this regard, the Government has taken various functionally re-enforcing policy measures that include sustainable development and poverty reduction program, rural development policy and strategy, and food security strategies.

The Government responses to the challenges of agricultural transformation and rural development for poverty reduction rests on six inter linked fundamental thematic strategies. These include.

? Supporting the expansion of service cooperatives and improving agricultural marketing,
? Providing extensive technical and vocational education and training in agriculture,
? Expanding financial institutions with focus on smallholder farmers and the rural poor,
? Designing and introduction of diversified extension packages,
? Ensuring proper land use and management, and
? The development of rural roads,

To mitigate and eventually overcome the current poverty induced food insecurity, the Government has adopted a comprehensive food security strategy aimed at increasing the availability of food through increased domestic production, ensuring access to food for food deficit household and strengthening emergency response capabilities.

The strategy gives highest emphasis to chronically food insecure moisture deficit and pastoral areas considering environmental rehabilitation water harvesting, livestock development and resettlement as pivotal tools of intervention.

To alleviate the problem of recurrent food shortage and ensure sustainable agricultural development requires continuous supply of appropriate technologies. To this end, the government has taken measures to develop agricultural technology packages, enhanced technology release system and evaluation of agri-technology on a regular basis. To this end, the Government is working in close partnership with the CGIAR centers to make sure effective, efficient and rapid technology delivery to the rural poor farmers.

With regard to, input output marketing, as an integral component of rural development, the following activities are underway, rural infrastructure development, market information, reduce transaction cost, disease free zone quarantine and certification, quality standard and safety measures and contractual marketing and others.

Your Excellencies
Distinguished delegates
Ladies and gentle men

The other area, which the Government put high priority, is capacity building, In its agricultural and rural development policy and strategy, the Government views capacity building and institutional development as an important means of creating the social capital necessary for comprehensive and equitable development.

Since, the overall performance of Ethiopia’s economy is highly dependent on the maximum and sustainable performance and transformation of agriculture, and its labor force to other off-farm activities, the need for educated, innovative, and creative skilled human labor force in agriculture is indispensable for the successful implementation of the ADLI strategy. In this regard, the Agricultural Technical and vocational training program, focusing on middle level vocational training and farmers training has been launched. For this purpose 25 colleges have been identified and being upgraded to a total enrollment capacity of 30,000 students,

The Government has the leading role in the implementation of the above-mentioned endeavors for poverty reduction and sustainable development, the key role of the private sector in this regard is paramount.

Since 1993, Ethiopia has been implementing measures aimed at liberalizing the private investment climate and the investment code it issued has been regularly revised to open up more investment opportunities and give more incentives for private sector. The privatization of the public enterprises is also progressing simultaneously.

Good governance is an important aspect of the strategic framework for poverty reduction. Aspects of good governance under implementation include. Expenditure management and control (EMC), anti-corruption measures, decentralization and empowerment.

Besides, decentralization of budget allocation at community level is also operational to expedite the development process.

Mr. President,
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I have underlined above the Government of Ethiopia is doing its level best to meet the millennium Development Goal and reduce poverty and bring about all round sustainable development. This will continue to be its main development agenda.

However, domestic effort alone would not be expected to produce the expected results. Ethiopia is committed to the NEPAD, sub-regional, regional and international organizations initiatives to promote partnership in which IFAD has been one of the key partners in our development efforts and will continue to be a partner in the future development efforts.

I would like to take this opportunity to call upon all our developed country partners to increase their development assistance and ensure that agriculture is at the center of development financing. It is important that agricultural research at national and international level is supported to make sure that appropriate technologies are available to the rural poor and sustainable development is realized. Ethiopia encourages sustainable financing to the international agricultural research centers whose activities are primarily focused on work designed to resolve the multifaceted and regional specific constraints faced by African countries.

Thank you for your kind attention.