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Introduction

This post originally appeared on IFPRI.org .

By Francesca Edralin

Ethiopia’s rapid economic and agricultural growth over the past two decades is a well-known African success story. In 2000, Ethiopia ranked as the second-poorest country in the world , according to Oxford University’s Global Multidimensional Poverty Index. Then, thanks in large part to sustained investments in the agricultural sector, the economy grew and poverty fell. Ethiopia was the third-fastest growing country in the world from 2000 to 2018 based on GDP per capita, according to World Bank data.

Recent occurrences in the global arena, such as volatile commodity and resource markets, suggest the urgent need for African countries to develop policy options that can mitigate resource constraints and their attendant consequences. The transformation and development of Africa’s agricultural sector, especially the development of functional value chains, hold huge potentials for African economies through employment creation, income generation, and improvement of household livelihoods.

By: Sara Gustafson

In the wake of the 2008 food price crisis, many policymakers and development practitioners shifted their focus toward enhancing the capacity and resilience of domestic food value chains. In West Africa, this new focus centered on rice. Since rice constitutes a leading staple food source in the region, it was hoped that increased investment in this area would increase domestic rice production and reduce reliance on imports, thus improving food security.

This post originally appeared on IFPRI's Ethiopia Support Strategy Program (ESSP) blog.

The share of households consuming dairy products in Addis Ababa has dropped by 11 percentage points since the COVID-19 crisis, seemingly linked to perceived risks of consuming dairy products. All income groups declined their consumption, except for the richest quintile where the share of consuming households changed little.