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'Development diplomat'
Dawit Alemu, an influential agricultural economist in Ethiopia, has devoted his career to linking agricultural research, extension and policy making.
He started at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and subsequently moved to manage projects under the Bilateral Ethiopian-Netherlands Effort for Food, Income and Trade (BENEFIT) partnership programme run by Wageningen University & Research. Since 2021, he has been the country representative of the Stichting Wageningen Research Ethiopia (SWR Ethiopia), which employs about forty people.
Building bridges
Alemu says his work at SWR Ethiopia is all about building bridges between researchers, farmers, businesses and policymakers: ‘Our work starts with uncovering the key challenges and opportunities in the food system and understanding how they can be addressed. We look for the leverage points together with local knowledge institutes, with farmers, entrepreneurs and value chain organisations, with policymakers and with support from Wageningen researchers.’
In addition, Alemu and his colleagues facilitate small-scale testing and validation of potential innovations that focus on challenges and opportunities in the food system. This generates well-documented evidence about what works – and what works less well.
The proof – which could be technology, improved practices or policy – is then communicated to practitioners, policymakers or businesses to convince them to change their practices or policies in the right direction, bringing about change on a larger scale.
Alemu: ‘All this requires timely engagement of stakeholders and trust building among the various actors. You have to be agile given the prevailing dynamic nature of the sector.’
Sesame farmers in debt
Take sesame farmers: they want to hire labourers during the harvest because this is labour-intensive work. Often, they don’t have money for this and borrow from local informal lenders – at an interest rate of 100% for a period of three months. So, for 1,000 Ethiopian Birr, you pay another 1,000 Birr in interest. And commercial banks are too wary to engage in such ventures.
Through one of the projects, the idea emerged of setting up a financial guarantee scheme to convince banks to provide loans to farmers' cooperatives, which then shoulder the responsibility for extending loans to their smallholder members. At the same time, farmers got financial literacy training, which included bookkeeping.
‘In the first year,’ says Alemu, ‘One of the banks was willing to give it a try. We started small; it was about validating the idea of linking a guarantee scheme to financial literacy training. The result was that the bank recovered one hundred per cent of the loans. We documented all this clearly and brought it to the attention of other banks. The following year, three other banks wanted to do it too. And three years later it had become a normal activity for commercial banks operating in that part of the country. This is the way we are making an impact. The main challenge is that it takes a lot of time to identify leverage points, to test and validate potential innovations, and then get them mainstreamed.’
Sometimes, a person in a company or government is convinced, but then leaves for another job. And then the whole process has to be started again with the new official.
‘Our role is to bring people together, but sometimes you need to be creative. If it doesn’t work one way, we try to find another way. Am I a kind of development diplomat? Yes! You have to be.’
