The Partnership supports multiple fora for dialogue and coordination, including the National Seed Forum, Ethio-NL Seed Committee, NSAG, and RSCGs. These are the highest arenas for agenda setting, with regards to short- and medium-term implementation of the Partnership.
Focus of the partnership
- Facilitating dialogue between public, private, foreign, domestic, and humanitarian parties with interests and concerns in the Ethiopian seed sector;
- Prioritizing problems, designing solutions and outlining strategies for bringing these to scale, and thereby setting the short- and medium-term agenda of the Partnership;
- Facilitating collaboration in the implementation and coordination of these strategies;
- Enhancing ownership, transparency and accountability in the implementation and coordination of strategies;
- Monitoring and evaluating their success, and sharing, discussing and learning lessons from not only achievements, but failures as well;
Target crops and geographies
The Partnership focus on key crops for food security and nutrition, including cereals, pulses, oilseeds, potato, other roots and tubers, fruit, vegetables, and forages for dairy and meat production. Whilst international companies lend their expertise and with-it high value vegetable seed and seed potatoes, domestic businesses target cereals, pulses, and oilseeds. International companies apply different business models and operate in different market segments to domestic businesses and as a result do not compete in product portfolio.
On the other hand, farmer- and community-based seed systems – including community seed banks – provide quality seed where chronic seed insecurity is often prevalent and commercial seed businesses fail to reach the last mile. Their product portfolio comprises improved and local varieties, including landraces that are preferred by farmers and adapted to local climates, of both food and feed crops. This justifies optimizing both their respective and combined contributions to food, nutrition, and climate resilience in Ethiopia. Given their importance for human, and in particular maternal, infant, and young child nutrition, the Partnership prioritizes the value chains of fresh fruit and vegetables, pulses, and forages (the latter to increase intake of meat
and dairy).
Collaboration with private sector
At the heart of our collaboration is improving access to private as well as public goods. Private sector will play a leading role as collaborators outside of the consortium to address public goods challenges in addition to their (pre)commercial business activities in Ethiopia. In addition to domestic businesses in seed production and downstream in selected value chains, several international breeding companies have expressed their interest to invest significantly in three or more of the following:
- Advising domestic businesses in local seed production;• Demonstrating improved technologies;
- Introducing new varieties and nutritionally important crops to the country;
- Hiring young graduates as interns and potential future employees;
- Identifying problems and offering solutions to Ethiopia’s seed regulatory services.
