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USAID/ Ethiopia - Success Stories
›Back to Basics: The Community Tutor
›HIV/AIDS and the Military
›Family Planning on the Increase in Ethiopia
›Restructuring Agricultural Cooperatives in EthiopiaBack to Basics:
The Community TutorAcross Africa, ministries of education, their donors, and nongovernmental partners have struggled for decades to use locally relevant content in primary schooling. Results had not been encouraging.
USAID's Basic Education System Overhaul Program's Community School Grants Program (CSGP) in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) challenged these less than encouraging results through the Popular Participation in Curriculum and Instruction Project (PoPCI). This project is an example of community participation at its best. It brings teachers from 15 schools together with their respective indigenous experts to develop and deliver lessons to primary students on topics such as carpentry, pottery, traditional mediation, and agriculture. Under the PoPCI model, the local experts and teachers jointly design a text and lesson on a local topic that the community expert delivers as a special class. The teacher then folds it into her/his lessons taught under the conventional curriculum.
Teachers and experts at local schools created, delivered, and incorporated five texts and lessons for a total of 75. Teachers and their directors in some schools agreed that one period for the lesson was inadequate, inviting the local experts back several times each (up to 10 times in some cases) to complete the explanations and demonstrations. PoPCI was intriguing enough to the 30 teachers from the 15 schools involved that they agreed to collaborate with the local experts to create a set of texts over the summer vacation.
An evaluation of the PoPCI activity showed increased value and a positive attitude for local vocations in the eyes of the community. A fourth grade student at Hibret school, Sidama Zone, said that with his PoPCI lessons, he has learned there are other, new choices for him professionally. A female classmate explained how PoPCI has not only broadened her employment horizon to include local professions, but also strengthened her learning. "Something in the conventional curriculum is very theoretical," she said, "but when the community expert comes to present his or her work and the teacher relates the lesson to our subjects, it helps us to understand better."
Mr. Kebede, a blacksmith, who served as a local expert, lives close to Hibret School. Previously, students passed by his house on their way to school without giving him a thought. After his PoPCI lesson, students congregate at his workshop to watch and learn from him.
Finally, PoPCI reconfirms what BESO's CSGP has learned from its five-year experience: that with training and support communities can make influential and useful contributions to their children's education.
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HIV/AIDS and the Military
Since the inception of the Ethiopia Social Marketing Program (ESMP) in 1990, implemented by Population Services International, USAID/Ethiopia has been at the forefront supporting the operational cost as well as procurement of condoms and oral contraceptives. Based on the number of condoms marketed, the ESMP is the second most successful social marketing program in sub-Saharan Africa, with over 49 million condoms and 1 million oral contraceptives socially marketed this fiscal year. Working with different segments of society, including the military, has contributed to the success of program.
The Ethiopian military, with an enlightened attitude toward HIV/AIDS, started a HIV/AIDS prevention and control program five years ago. One of the major focal areas is primary prevention, with procurement of condoms from the social marketing program playing a critical role. With the recent initiation of the demobilization process after the Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict, the Ministry of Defense has assigned HIV/AIDS prevention a high priority, which has resulted in an intensified program of intervention. In 2000, PSI/DKT sold 17 million condoms to the military. During the same period PSI/DKT conducted training programs on HIV awareness and on proper and consistent use of condoms for military personnel. DKT also produced a two-hour film with the military on protecting their families from HIV/AIDS. The film ends with a demonstration on condom use to encourage correct and consistent use.
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Family Planning on the
Increase in EthiopiaWith a population growth of 2.76 percent per annum, Ethiopia will surpass 83 million by 2006. With these kinds of statistics, USAID Ethiopia actively supports family planning programs through local NGOs. One of the more successful NGOs, the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia (FGAE), revealed that the contraceptive prevalence rate had increased to 44.5 percent from a baseline of 12.6 percent in 1996, in their target area. Contraceptive method mix in this particular area shifted towards use of long-term and permanent methods. Use of injectables increased from 13.4 percent in 1996 to 36.2 percent in 2000, and use of Norplant and voluntary surgical contraception (VSC) increased from a baseline of 0 in 1996 to 7.8 percent and 3.2 percent respectively during the same period.
Program interventions that contributed to the success include: expansion of community based reproductive health services, linking community based services to clinic based services, ensuring that quality services are provided through making a wide range of contraceptive methods available, and improving technical competence of service providers, which included improving their interpersonal communication skills.
With such a concerted effort in expanding both access and quality, USAID/Ethiopia is confident that the mission will contribute towards meeting the family planning needs of Ethiopian couples. Yirbab, for example, is a 38-year-old housewife with six children married to a peasant farmer in Haik, North Wollo. Atetegeb is her 24-year-old daughter with four children, also a housewife married to a peasant farmer. The community based reproductive health agent that services her area counseled Yirbab on the available methods of contraceptives. Since she wanted her daughter to have a better life than her, she took the community health worker to her daughter, and together they counseled Atetegeb on family planning methods. Both mother and daughter then convinced their husbands and got the VSC service at the Family Guidance Association of Ethiopia clinic in Dessie.
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Restructuring Agricultural
Cooperatives in EthiopiaAgricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia, with the assistance of USAID and Agricultural Cooperative Development International/Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI/VOCA), are being transformed into dynamic agribusiness enterprises, with shareholder members exercising their ownership rights to take control of their economic future.
The Derg Government (1975-1991) established an extensive network of socialist agricultural cooperatives throughout Ethiopia to organize the peasants, control agricultural prices, levy taxes, and extend government control to the local level. Farmers came to view the cooperative-with mandatory membership, quotas for grain to be delivered to the government, and boards of directors and managers appointed by the ruling party-as a synonym for government oppression. This system collapsed immediately following the government's overthrow in 1991.
The new Ethiopian government embarked on an aggressive program of economic and political liberalization, including steps to promote the development of democratic, free-market oriented, and professionally managed agricultural cooperatives. USAID laid the groundwork for this initiative beginning in 1994 by sending American volunteers to the field under the Farmer-to-Farmer program managed by ACDI/VOCA. USAID/Ethiopia followed these initial efforts with direct funding for agricultural cooperative development. Since these efforts began, ACDI/VOCA staff and over 140 volunteers have helped revitalize Ethiopian cooperatives by providing technical advice and training to government officials, cooperative promoters, board members, managers and accountants in cooperative organization, operation, and business management.
The Oromia Coffee Farmers Union is just one example of successful cooperative reorientation and development. Established in 1998 with ACDI/VOCA support, the Union exported 54 tons of coffee to the U.S. and France in 2000 with a value of over $120,000. The union is currently registered with the fair-trade labeling organization in Europe and has obtained organic certification from ECO Guarantee (a German-based certifying agency), both of which have increased the market value of its exports to Europe and the United States.
USAID/Ethiopia and ACDI/VOCA also helped four cooperative unions acquire a $650,000 line of credit from the Bank of Abyssinia to finance grain-marketing activities. The Washington-managed Loan Portfolio Guarantee Program facilitated this first-ever credit to agricultural cooperatives by a private bank. Plans are to expand the credit line to over $1,200,000 in FY 2001, making credit available to 15 agricultural cooperative unions with over 100,000 members.
The impact of USAID/Ethiopia and ACDI/VOCA efforts to date has been dramatic. Over 1,400 agricultural cooperatives throughout Ethiopia have been reoriented, restructured, and legally registered; 14 cooperative unions (agricultural cooperatives whose shareholders are other agricultural cooperatives) have been established to take advantage of economies of scale; and cooperatives have become major players in agricultural input and output markets. For example, agricultural cooperatives increased agricultural input sales to their members from 3,500 metric tons (MT) in 1997 to 67,766 MT in 2000; increased the amount of member produce marketed from 5,000 MT in 1997 to 27,360 MT in 2000; and paid their members over $1,000,000 in dividends in 2000, a 10,000 percent increase from 1997.
In summary, USAID support for cooperative development in Ethiopia has helped reorient government officials and change farmer attitudes to embrace cooperatives as profitable, farmer-owned business enterprises providing services and benefits to their members, improving market access, contributing to economic development, and increasing rural household food security.
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More about USAID/ Ethiopia
USAID/ AFR Success Stories
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Updated: Wednesday, January 9, 2002
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Last Updated on: July 19, 2004 |
