Job Opportunity for Female Employability through the adoption of Proven Enset Technologies

Details
PROJECT SUMMARY

Project name

Job Opportunity for Female Employability through the adoption of Proven Enset Technologies

Project short-name

JOB-FEET

AMU project code

EXT/AU-EU-DE/VPRP/21/2017

Project phase

I

Partner(s)/ country(ies)

Africa Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), European Union and Germany

AMU coordinating office(s)

VPRC

Project type

Research Based Community Development

Project implementation location

South Ethiopia, Central Ethiopia, and Sidama Regions

Target communities

Youths and Women

Project coordinator

Dr. Wondwossen Jerene Daare

Principal investigator (PI)

Dr. Wondwossen Jerene Daare

Co-investigators

Dr. Addisu Fekadu, Dr. Abiyot Tsegaye, Mr. Eyob Defersha,

Mr. Workineh H/Michael, Mr. Tibebu Zenebe, Mss. Geertje Dingemanse

AMU budget contribution (in Euro)

39,816

1st partner budget contribution in Euro

8,295

2nd partner budget contribution (Euro)

7,189

Total project budget AMU (in Euro)

389,790

Project start

1-Sep-24

Project end

30-Jun-26

Financial reporting period

Milestone based

Progress reporting period

Quarterly

Contact person (name and e-mail)

Dr. Wondwossen Jerene (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.),
+251920440967

Project Management Office

Office of the Director for Grant and Collaborative Project Management:

Dr. Thomas Torora (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) 
PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Enset (Ensete ventricosum), which is grown and consumed as a staple food in Ethiopia, and source of food and income for about thirty million Ethiopians. The crop, which is environment friendly and drought resistant, has been named as A tree against hunger and expected to assure food security in Ethiopia and across the horn of Africa. However, it is mainly produced by traditional production approach which is labor intensive, time consuming, cumbersome, wasteful, low quality, and mainly by women. As the production system is cumbersome and time consuming, the educated youths have been showing a negative attitude towards its production and prefer to be engaged in other work or even to be unemployed or migrate from rural to urban. Currently, enset farming is left for women and even farmers abandoning Enset and shifting to growing other commercial crops such as Chat , which have adverse effect on users health. Drawing upon the problem, Arba Minch University innovated user-friendly enset processing technology and patented. The technology proved to simplify production, decrease food waste, increase food quality, decrease time taken, and pave the way for mass commercialization of enset products like cake, bread, coccus etc. Despite its immense bene t, this technology has not been well introduced to the Enset growers and Enset food producers. Thus, the project aimed to directly bene t about 1500 unemployed female youths and disabled groups through; forming enterprises in three regions of Ethiopia with four different groups (1. Disease free enset seedling propagation 2. Enset food processing, 3. Enset processing innovative machine manufacturing, 4. Non-food part of enset production). Hence, the project aims at availing the technology to the Enset growers at private and organization level via youths and mainstream the Enset processing technology as one of the possible sources of sustainable job opportunity and food security in Ethiopia.