Presented by Barbara Rischkowsky, ICARDA, at the Livestock CRP Priority Countries Planning Meeting, Nairobi, 26–27 March 2019

1. Ethiopia Small Ruminant Value Chain
Initial ideas for Integrated Core
Project
Barbara Rischkowsky, ICARDA
Livestock CRP Priority Countries Planning Meeting
26 – 27 March 2019
Nairobi, Kenya

2. 1. Consultative site selection process (June-Oct 2012) – seven sites selected
2. Complimentary reviews and assessments (July 2012-Dec 2014)
3. Rapid Value Chain Analysis (VCA); Rapid Integrated Food Safety assessments (Nov
2012-May 2013); Situation Analysis (2013); Quantitative VCA (2013-2014)
4. Multi-stakeholder meetings for prioritization and planning of site-specific interventions
and research (March/April 2013)
5. Development of research and development partnerships for implementing prioritized
interventions (continuous)
6. Testing/Implementation/Evaluation of prioritized best-bet interventions (July 2013-?)
and complimentary Cap Dev ; financial feasibiliy
7. Theory of Change and impact pathways for Ethiopian VC and MEL (2014-2016)
8. Testing of integrated packages of proven best-bet technologies/interventions (2016-
2019)
9. Development of business models (3 models so far)
Achievements: framework for VCT
What we have learned so far

3. Achievements
• Toolbox for VCA including gender analysis
• Assessments and reviews related to Health, Genetics and Feeds
• Multi-stakeholder process to select sites, identify intervention
areas and best-bet interventions and intervention packages
• Best bets tested and partly evaluated addressing four major
intervention areas
• A number of best-bets are ready for scaling (including knowledge
products)
• Increased capacity of national research partners
What we have learned so far

4. Lessons learnt
• Poor dcumentation of interventions of earlier projects in Ethiopia
prevented efficient learning
• Theory of Change and MEL framework were too complex to be
applied, monitoring of changes in partners difficult if they have
poor documentation
• Institiutional interventions are costly and require substantial buy-
in from public sector and development partners
• Community based approaches ensured to get the necessary buy-
in of the farmers, and bridged the gap between researchers and
farmers
• Significant differences in progress between sites were observed:
individual researcher responsible for site activities makes a
difference and engagement of regional research center
• Cross-country analysis requires adequate experimental design
What we have learned so far

5. What could we reasonably expect to achieve as
outcomes by December 2021?
• Vision: By 2023, people in Ethiopia benefit from equitable,
sustainable and efficient sheep and goat value chains: their
animals are more productive, livestock markets work for producers,
consumers and business, there are more, more affordable and
healthier small ruminant products, and the livelihoods and
capacities of people involved in the whole chain are improved
Expected Outcomes:
• Higher productivity
• Livestock markets work for producers
• Improved livelihoods
• Improved capacities of producers, researchers and development
agents

6. What an integrated intervention could look like
Site specific intervention plans: example Doyogena site
• The goal of the overall interventions will be strengthening community
based sheep breeding program integrated with better management
(nutrition, health, marketing and equal gender participation) for improved
livelihoods of the farming community which are facing extreme land
shortage and high human population.
Outline of the desired integrated package of 12 interventions:
• Strengthen CBBP to be used as entry point for other interventions
• artificial insemination in connection with ultrasound
• community based GIT parasites control, integrated herd health approach
to reduce respiratory diseases, reproductive performance
• Sheep fattening
• Pulse crops with food-feed traits to support sheep productivity.
• Improved market facilities
• Training women in small ruminant husbandry and health
• Tapping the knowledge of women in small ruminant disease surveillance
and management

7. What an integrated intervention could look like
Key challenges
• Design to measure added value of integration of interventions
• Some important enabling interventions are too costly to
implement by us
• Packages were not designed by producers

8. Site-specific Intervention packages designed at MS SmaRT WS in April 2017
Some selected interventions need co-investment
Current situation:
Diverse combination of interventions
by each household
(driven by type of
best-bet intervention)
Integrated packages of interventions
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9. CGIAR Research Program on Livestock
livestock.cgiar.org
The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock aims to increase the productivity and profitability of livestock agri-food
systems in sustainable ways, making meat, milk and eggs more available and affordable across the developing world.
This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
The program thanks all donors and organizations which globally support its work through their contributions to the CGIAR system