An independent study found that agricultural innovations from the CGIAR have reached nearly 80% of rural households in Ethiopia over the past 20 years. The study identified 52 innovations from CGIAR in crop improvement, animal agriculture, and natural resource management that were integrated into national surveys in Ethiopia. These surveys found that between 4.1 and 11 million rural Ethiopian households adopted CGIAR innovations, demonstrating the significant role of CGIAR research in Ethiopia's agricultural development.

1. NewsletterHappenings
In-house version 12 November 2020, No.1880
New study: CGIAR innovations reach nearly 80% of
Ethiopia’s rural households
Originally published on CGIAR
An independent study published last month has
documented the extensive reach of CGIAR-related
agricultural innovations in Ethiopia over the past 20
years. The study represents the culmination of years of
work by the independent CGIAR Standing Panel on
Impact Assessment (SPIA)[1], together with the
Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency (CSA) and the World
Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team,
to develop and test a country-level approach to
assessing adoption and diffusion of agricultural
innovations using national surveys.
Piloting this new approach for the first time in Ethiopia,
a CGIAR research hotspot, the study finds that a sample
of CGIAR-related agricultural innovations have
potentially reached 11 million rural Ethiopian
households — nearly 80 percent of all rural households
in the country — with substantial adoption among poor
smallholders, women and youth.
Usman Kadir and his family are growing maize and wheat varieties suitable for drought- and disease-affected areas
in Ethiopia.
Photo: A Habtamu, ILRI
To document the reach of CGIAR-related innovations,
SPIA started with a stocktake of all such innovations
disseminated in Ethiopia in the period 1999–2019.
Consultations with CGIAR and national stakeholders
revealed 52 different innovations across the domains of
animal agriculture, crop germplasm improvement, and
natural resource management (NRM), and 26 instances
of policy influence. Working with partners LSMS and
CSA, 18 shortlisted innovations were integrated into
nationally representative household surveys in 2016 and
2019, which were then used to track uptake.
CGIAR’s significant contribution to Ethiopia’s
agricultural development
CGIAR innovations have reached between 4.1 and 11
million Ethiopian households, the study found, evidence
of CGIAR’s broad contribution to Ethiopia’s agricultural
development. The importance of CGIAR research for