(Mar. 1) – “The color of the wheat will bring me back the thought of you”, so wrote Antoine Saint-Exupéry.in his masterpiece “The Little Prince”. The mission “Agricultural Value Chains in Oromia”, a project promoted by the Italian Cooperation in Addis Ababa in collaboration with the Institute for Overseas Agronomic Institute, will aim to revive the cultivation of hard wheat to help Ethiopia to meet its food needs. The goal is to build a chain of high quality wheat in the Bale zone, in the south central part of the country. The program, which involves 15 farmer cooperatives, points to reach a production of 500 thousand tons of wheat within the next 5 years. “The hard wheat – the cooperation explains – has been cultivated for centuries in Ethiopia, but has now been supplanted by soft wheat. However, the consumption of pasta is growing a lot in the country, and there is a strong demand for raw materials . With our project, we intend to demonstrate that the current imports of hundreds of thousands of wheat can be substituted by a domestic production”. The project, which involves about 10.000 small farmers in the districts of Agarfa, Goro, Ginir, Gololcha and Sinana has already achieved an important first goal with the signing, a few days ago, of a supply contract between two agricultural cooperatives and a pasta industry. (Roc/Peg)
ITALIAN DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION IN ETHIOPIA
The cooperation between Italy and Ethiopia started in 1976, when it was signed the first bilateral agreement on the implementation of development projects. From the mid-eighties to the present, Ethiopia became a priority country of Italian Development Cooperation . Today there are four priority areas of intervention of the Italian Cooperation : health, education, rural development and water, plus the cross areas good governance and gender / children.
