Enhancing Potato Innovation Systems for Scaling Climate-Smart Technologies for Smallholders in Ethiopia

PROJECT CLOSING CONFERENCE (11-12 Aug. 2022)

Project Goal

Smallholder farm households in Ethiopia adopt improved varieties and management practices, increase their productivity and incomes, and are better able to meet their minimum dietary energy requirements.

The project purpose

The purpose of the project is to strengthen potato innovation systems to facilitate farmer access to improved, resilient potato technologies, and support national research institutes’ capacity for continued development of demand-driven varieties and their adaptation through a responsive and sustainable seed production and distribution network.

Project expected outputs

Output 1: Sustainable local supply of broadened range of climate-smart and disease- resistant potato varieties.

Output 2: Increased efficiency in EGS potato production.

Output 3: Improved capacity of FSGCs in HQS production.

Output 4: Validated technologies to increase potato productivity scaled to resource- poor smallholder farmers.

Output 5:Gender-sensitive methods for access to technology and knowledge mainstreamed in project interventions.

Output 6:Strengthened potato innovation systems coordination and partnerships.

Among activities proposed to achieve the project objectives includes, monitoring, evaluation and learning with regular feedback and information exchange with stakeholders. Before initiation of field activities, a project inception workshop was organized with a promise that a conference to close this intervention will be conducted to give final feedback to key stakeholders, share key achievements and suggest areas that require improvement in future. Thus, this project closing conference is intended to

1. Give feedback to stakeholders regarding the achievements of the project against set targets
2. Share with key project stakeholders how far the activities managed to achieve the goals and purposes it was intend.
3. Recommend areas that need to be addressed in future interventions for the improvement of the potato in Ethiopia.
4. Meet the development and implementing partner requirement to provide final feedback to stakeholders before all project activities are closed.

This conference has been planned for 11-12^th August 2022 and will bring together key potato experts and stakeholders from agricultural research, seed regulation and variety release, agricultural policy and extension, private seed producers, development partners, non-governmental organizations and potato processing companies. The invited delegates will be Amhara, Oromia and SNNP regions which comprise the project intervention areas. These regions will represent two districts in SNNP, four in Oromia and seven from Amhara all involving 80 kebeles from which 40,000 smallholders were to be directly reached with quality seed and other improved potato production technologies.