The Ethiopia implementation team of the DGIS project met in Addis Ababa on 9-12 December 2014, for the Inception Year Lesson Sharing, Validation, and Planning Workshop. Sixty participants from partner organizations attended the workshop held at Nexus hotel in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Present at the meeting was ICRAF, World Vision Ethiopia, World Vision Australia,the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Relief Society of Tigray (REST).

This workshop is the first in a series of in-country meetings to reflect on the lessons learnt from the inception year of the five-year DGIS funded project. These lessons will be used to inform the planning of the activities for the project.

In her opening remarks, Margaret Schuler, the World Vision Ethiopia’s National Director stressed the importance of having a collaborative partnership arrangement between the development and research sector through the life of the project. Her sentiments were echoed by ICRAF’s Dr. Jonathan Muriuki, Kenya’s Country Representative. Dr. Muriuki is the project leader in Kenya. He added that the uniqueness of the inception year is to learn not only from the gains, but also the challenges the project has.

World Vision Ethiopia shared many of the successes achieved working with the other project partners. These are the adoption of a watershed based approaches and “bottom up” driven planning and implementation processes. The key challenges that emerged from the workshop as presented by the partners was shortage of time for implimentation of the activities as planned. Lessons from the implementation phase will be used to inform the country planning for Ethiopia in 2015. This will include a revised focus on processes to measure the on-ground impact of the project.

The “enhancing food and water security for rural economic development in Ethiopia” Programme will focus extensively on semi-arid areas of Northern Ethiopia and the Rift Valley. The goal of the Programme is to improve the livelihoods of the poor from subsistence farmers and emergency aid to sustainable rural development by increasing food and water security, better access to market and strengthening the local economy.

This project is helping farmers to use their knowledge in good soil, water and trees management and growing rural business by connecting them to farmer cooperatives that offer financial support. The provisionary targets for Ethiopia after five years is 100,000 hectares rehabilitated, water productivity improved by 30 percent and about 14,000 farmers’ living standards improved through interventions in about 160 villages.