3 March 2021 Addis Ababa: The Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has signed a grant agreement amounting to more than 6.7 Million ETB between 8 modern beehive makers through its Ethiopian Agribusiness Acceleration Platform (EAAP) Project. The sub grant agreement aims to create the selected beehive makers from Oromia and SNNP region to purchase wood machines.
The grant agreement was signed between representatives from the eight beehive makers and Ato Dawit Phillipos, A/ Senior Director, Operations at the ATA Head Office Dr. Yifru Tafese, ATA Deputy CEO who emphasized the importance of apiculture in Ethiopia and the untapped potential of the sector. “However due to the lack of access to modern beekeeping inputs the quality of honey among beekeepers is low. The ATA with its EAAP project is working on capacity building with companies that are linked with the incubation and acceleration track including providing technical support, facilitating linkages, and providing subgrant supports like today”. Dr. Yifru concluded his remarks by assuring the participants that the ATA will continue in providing the necessary support to the beehive makers to ensure the growth.
Commercial agricultural enterprises that are so essential to make value chains competitive are largely missing in Ethiopia, particularly across the downstream end of the value chain. A number of challenges have contributed to the absence of sufficient number of agriculture enterprises in Ethiopia, chief among them an under-developed business ecosystem “building blocks” such as access to financial services, talent, reliable input supply,
management, sector expertise, and markets. There is thus a need for targeted support to spur the growth of agribusinesses that can address this gap. In many other countries, well-designed and well-financed agribusiness incubators and accelerators have shown the ability to fill such gap through comprehensive business development services and funding for start-ups and growth agro-enterprises.
Based primarily on these learnings, the ATA has established the Ethiopian Agribusiness Accelerator Platform (EAAP) to test and validate the agribusiness incubator and accelerator concept for Ethiopia. The EAAP is a demand-driven, value chain focused business incubator and accelerator that helps high-potential agribusinesses to professionalize and scale. The platform works with both early stage and mature enterprises to engage players across the value chain. In doing so, it identifies and addresses company-specific and systemic challenges, and aims to build a high-quality, sustainable supply chain for partners across the value chain and create a market-driven, business-building model for participant entrepreneurs.