With the support of AGRA, ESA has contracted national consultants to review and revise the association’s constitution, develop and adopt a code of ethics for members, and draft ESA business and operational strategies, all of which will be presented to stakeholders for feedback.
The session will take place at the Bellevue hotel in Addis Ababa on Friday, June 17th, 2022.
On March 7-8, 2022, the Ethiopian Seed Association held its annual general assembly. It’s been three years since the last general assembly, due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the country’s turmoil. The theme of this year annual assembly is ‘competitive seed system for sustainable supply of high-quality seed to farmers.’ Mr. Melaku Admasu, the board chairman, started the meeting with a welcome remark. In his welcoming remark Mr. Melaku explained the objective of the assembly, status of the association, its accomplishments, and the challenges confronting the private sector in the Ethiopian seed sector. Then Mr. Germame Garuma made an opening statement. Mr. Germame, the acting state minister of agriculture for the Ministry of Agriculture, praised the association’s efforts in facilitating such forums in his opening remarks. He emphasized that the ministry is committed to strengthening the association.
Then, the subsequent session of the meeting focused on looking ahead regarding opportunities, new initiatives and directions for the Ethiopian seed sector. The Ethiopian Netherlands Seed Partnership and AGRA presented their potential support services to strengthen the association. Discussion held on the presentations; the key issue raised was the need to align the different initiatives in the Ethiopian seed sector.
The workshop’s second day was devoted to internal issues, and the majority of the attendees were members. During a breakout session members reviewed their primary needs from the association, the association’s constraining challenges, and what the association may implement in the future. Access to finance for seed businesses, the lack of a clear seed policy, the unfair allocation of EGS to private seed enterprises, and the requirement of land ownership to obtain a seed business license are among the main issues raised by participants. To alleviate these challenges participants recommended that the association focus on these issues and facilitate their resolution.
Then the audit report of the association presented, discussed and approved by members in one voice. Then, participants elected new board members. A total of 44 people attended the event, comprising of members of the association, stakeholders, and partner organizations.
The National policy and institutional environment has a strong impact on private seed sector investment to meet the needs of farmers for improved seed supply. The Ethiopian Seed Association (ESA) that support the interest of seed supplying companies has been … Continue reading
ESA studied a policy constraint on seed sector investment and briefly put summary of the report in Amharic version naming “ የግሉ-የዘር-ዘርፍ-ኢንቭስትመንት-ማነቆዎችና መወሰድ የሚገባቸው የመፍትሄ እርምጃዎች (አጭር መግለጫ)” to be used by its members and partners. This document is a brief summary of the main study document subsequently found on this web site by the title “An Assessment and Identification of Policy Constraints to Private Seed Sector Development in Ethiopia” and covers the overall policy challenges of seed business investment and options for improvement that have been agreed up on stakeholders of different levels. This document is presented to Ministry of Agriculture and most of the improvement options forwarded by study are becoming part of the interventions of the Ministry and are put under plan for implementation. The association believes that the report will help seed business environment and the policy makers in an effort to improve seed business investment enhancing in the country.
ESA studied a policy constraint on seed sector investment and published a study report “An Assessment and Identification of Policy Constraints to Private Seed Sector Development in Ethiopia” to be used by its members and partners. This study which was financed by AGRA-MIRA project, covers the overall policy challenges of seed business investment and options for improvement that have been agreed up on stakeholders of different levels. The brief summary of the report is presented to Ministry of Agriculture and most of the improvement options forwarded by study are under plan for implementation. The association believes that the report will help seed business environment and the policy makers in an effort to improve seed business investment enhancing in the country.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is currently implementing a five year Micro Reform for African Agriculture Business (MIRA) project in five countries including Ethiopia, which is designed to help to build the capacity of African governments to contentiously review and reform regulations that unintentionally limit private investment in local agribusinesses operating in Ethiopia.
As part of its support to Ethiopia, AGRA’s Policy and Advocacy Programme (PAP) provided a grant support to the Ethiopian Seed Association (ESA) to build local capacity in the improvement of the enabling environment for the private seed sector development in Ethiopia. In accordance, as part of the initial activities of the project, AGRA supported one study helps to identify key policies, regulations, administrative practices, institutional setups and any other investment disincentives such as duties and taxes, etc that limit the growth of private seed sector in Ethiopia and come up with viable set of reform solutions to address the challenges, and hence the draft study was submitted for which a one day validation workshop was organized on Mach 3, 2018, to evaluate the draft document report in a wider stakeholder forum as feed back to the study to get finalized.
Chairperson of ESA, Mr. Melaku Admassu, welcomed the participants and acknowledged the support of MIRA AGRA project, emphasized the focus of the workshop and highlighted the challenges faced. Mr. Mengesha Tadesse, AGRA- MIRA National Coordinator at ATA, also summarized AGRA’s support to the Ethiopian agriculture and introduced the background and objectives of the grant support to the Ethiopian Seed Association. Then, key findings of the study related to priority challenges and recommendations were presented based on which the stakeholders/participants thoroughly discussed on the specific presentation followed by group discussion that improved the recommendations.
A total of 40 stakeholders that included members of the Ethiopian Seed Association, Cooperative Unions, policy makers from Ministry of Agriculture & Natural Resources and experts from four National Regional States and from the development partners (BENEFIT-ISSD, ICARDA, AGRA, ATA and CYMMIT, FAO, Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity, Ethiopian Agriculture Research Institute) attended and thoroughly discussed internal and external issues and identified recent challenges in the sector which should be covered in the recommendation.
Ethiopian Seed Association (ESA) organized its Annual General Assembly in Addis Ababa on December 26, 2016 to assess its progress, share national seed sector development experiences in the public and private sector in the area of production, processing and marketing and identify challenges and set strategic focuses for further action. The conference was under taken with the financial support of ISSD under the thematic area of “Ensuring quality seed supply for improved crop production and productivity“. 55 participants were available on the conference, the composition of which includes members, nonmember companies, research, development partners including BENEFIT-ISSD team, coop unions etc.
Welcome speech was made by Mr. Melaku Admassu, Board Chairman of ESA. where he highlighted the objectives of the workshop, the progress of ESA and its future focus in the development of the seed sector. He highlighted the need for strengthening the technical services to its members and the industry, improve communication through electronics and various channels, organize appropriate seed training programs and workshops for members, support/strengthen institutional linkages between private sector and different stakeholders in the seed value chain Strengthening the Association’s global seed contacts, partnership, joint venture etc. and make a ESA financially sustainable.
The conference was officially addressed by His Excellency, State Minster, MOANR, Ato Tesfaye Mengistu. His Excellency appreciated the effort of such association that focuses to address one of the critical challenges of crop production and productivity that small hold farmers are facing today as seed contributes about 50% of crop productivity, so the need to work hard to realize the GTP II target in agriculture significantly lies on seed sector. His Excellency underlined the importance of the forum to address such critical challenges of small holder farmers as smallholders’ agriculture will also continue to be the major source of agricultural growth and the share of private sector is also expected to rise as one of the sources of agriculture growth in the country. And hence, he underscored members of the association are expected to strengthen their capacity and avail quality seed to the growing demand of this development sector, where he appreciated the effort of ESA to undertake such action in such annual conference.
Different papers with valuable information were shared on the forum on the following titles:
The conference summarized the critical priority issues that need to be resolved at national seed policy level, at ESA level and at company level in order for the private seed sector to play a meaningful role in the development of the Ethiopia seed industry. In order to realize the efforts, it was noted that,
ESA has hybrid maize seed production manual to be used by its members and partners. The manual covers pictorial presentation of the field operation, disease and insect pest management and seed quality standards that help to be competitive in the supply of quality seed to farmers. The association believes that the manual will help seed producers to use better seed production technologies so that maize farmers benefit from the high genetic potential of the hybrid they grow. The association will continue producing similar manual for the economical import crops.
ISSD Ethiopia programme arranged two successive workshops on seed marketing and internal quality control for private and public seed enterprises from September 1-6, 2014 at Dreamliner hotel, Addis Ababa.
http://www.issdethiopia.org/index.php/news-events/201-good-seed-does-not-cost-it-pays
The main objectives of the forum was to create awareness among ESGPA’s members on the Ethiopian seed law and regulation and to give feedback to the regulatory body to support the production and timely supply of high quality seed to farmers and to encourage the companies to involve in national and regional seed business. http://www.issdethiopia.org/index.php/news-events/192-esa
Ethiopian Seed Association 
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