The Ethiopian irrigation success story was the focus of the webinar organised by the Malabo Montpellier Panel on 14th February 2019, based on their second report, Water-Wise: Smart Irrigation Strategies for Africa, which summarizes the key findings of a systematic analysis of what six African countries at the forefront of progress on irrigation have done right: Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Niger and South Africa. The guest speaker and author of this presentation, Mr. Zena Habtewold Biru, Director of the Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate at the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and Focal Person for the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Program (CAADP) discussed the case of Ethiopia’s remarkable growth in irrigation expansion over the last years, and the concrete practical steps that the government took to become one of the leading African countries in terms of agricultural irrigation, thereby reducing unemployment, poverty rate and malnutrition. During the seminar Mr. Zena Habtewold Biru discussed the following questions: •What did Ethiopia do differently? •What are the main institutional innovations? •What are the key policy measures? •What are the country’s major programs and interventions? •How and what did it take to mobilize the government to uptake strong regulatory frameworks that govern irrigation and the use of water in agriculture? •What are the practical lessons for other Africans to learn from and to adapt to the context of their own countries?