West shoa Zone consultation meeting with zonal experts on LIVES project
May 29th 2012
Venue- Zonal administration office
Procedure:
- Short briefing to the Head of the Bureua of Agriculture and Deputy Head of the zonal administration; Livestock agency head, irrigation head and office of agriculture. At 8: 30am
- Setting up the zonal expert consultation meeting for the same morning- 9:00 am.
Main Agendas at the 9:00 am expert consultation meeting
- Briefing on the LIVES project (purpose, aim, approach and expected outcomes)
- Validation of the commodities selected for West Shoa
- Selection of three potential districts that make clusters
- Listing zonal actors and service providers contributing (have a potential) for selected commodities
- Describing and analyzing each actors and service providers role, capacity, opportunities
- Identifying staffing at each department in the zonal offices (Livestock agency, office of agriculture, cooperative and water office), along with their education level and specialization
Briefing on the LIVES project (purpose, aim, approach and expected outcomes) - According to the agenda Ato Nigatu Alemayehu introduced the purpose and the detailed task of the meeting for the participants. Then, Dr. Ephrem made a brief presentation on the rational, objective, proposed outcomes and impacts, target regions, commodities, components and project management modalities of LIVES for the Zonal expert consultation meeting participants. This is followed by Commodity and Woreda selection, actors mapping, which was facilitated by Fanos Mekonnen.
Validation of the commodities selected for West Shoa- commodities selected for west shoa by regional experts was presented and participants were asked if they agree with the selection. Comments were raised that beef has equal potential as that of small ruminants and thus should be selected. A counterpart argument was put forward stating that small ruminants are more channeled to bigger markets (to A.A) as compared to Beef animals from the zone. In addition fewer farmers are involved in beef animal production as compared to Small ruminants; knowledge on beef production is well disseminated. Therefore, group decided to keep small ruminant for its potential to address female headed households; the existing potential for scaling up through different approaches and learning.
Selection of three potential districts that make clusters- Each district’s potential in west shoa, 21 in number, for selected commodities were ranked. See table below for woreda potential ranking
No / West Shoa Districts / Honey / Milk/butter / Small Ruminant / Irrigated Agriculture / Total& bee wax
2 / Ginde Beret / 2 / 1 / 2 / 2 / 7
3 / Jeldu / 3 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 10
4 / Ambo / 0
5 / Midakegni / 1 / 1 / 2 / 1 / 5
6 / Chelia / 3 / 2 / 3 / 2 / 10
7 / Bako Tibe / 2 / 1 / 1 / 3 / 7
8 / Dano / 3 / 1 / 1 / 3 / 8
9 / Nono / 3 / 1 / 1 / 3 / 8
10 / Tikur Enchini / 1 / 3 / 3 / 1 / 8
11 / Dendi / 0
12 / Ejerie / 3 / 3 / 3 / 3 / 12
13 / Welmera / 0
14 / Adea Berga / 3 / 3 / 3 / 3 / 12
15 / Metarobi / 2 / 2 / 3 / 3 / 10
16 / Abuna Gindeberet / 2 / 1 / 2 / 2 / 7
17 / Toko Kutaye / 0
18 / Jibat / 2 / 1 / 3 / 2 / 8
19 / Elifata / 1 / 1 / 3 / 2 / 7
21 / Elu Gelan / 2 / 1 / 1 / 3 / 7
Before the selection of learning woredas for LIVES, the following points as criteria for the selection of target districts were communicated
1. Production potential
2. Market potential
3. Market and other infrastructures
4. Availability of Capacity at farmerer level, and support services
Accordingly three of the woredas marked greed were selected. The ones marked red are AGP woredas and thus were not ranked to avoid redundancy of efforts and resources as was requested by the regional office.
Possible clusters were three
1. Metarobi, Ada Berga, Ejere
2. Metarobi, Ejere, Jeldu
3. Ada Berga, Metarobi, Jeldu
However, zonal experts explained that though Jeldu makes a cluster geographically there is no physical road access to create actual clusters of the three districts required. Therefore, the first cluster Metarobi, Ada Berga and Ejere were selected.
Another plus for the selected cluster is the existence of well developed irrigation sites, existence of well developed milk shed, and vicinity and access to big markets for all commodities. From the discussion, most of the districts in West Shoa have high potential in the commodities; especially apiculture, small ruminant and irrigated agriculture. They were ranked lower because of their inaccessibility to market.
After the selection of the commodities and the Woredas, the expert consultation team mapped the various value chain actors involved in the four selected commodity chains for the zone (See VC actors description template).
Finally, different experts were assigned to help the team to facilitate further data collection from the different offices and units of the zone so that a full pictures of the value chain actors, gaps and potentials to be mapped and analyzed.
At the end of the day the woreda dministration provided the team with the support letter for the three selected Woreda administrators and OoA offices to facilitate Woreda level data collection and PA selection activities for the LIVES team.
Data on zonal socio economics, list of NGOs in the zone was also obtained from the zonal economic and finance office- NGO coordination desk.
Next step
On day Three (May 30)- The team moves to the selected woredas