Towards scaling up proven approaches in the agriculture sector in Ethiopia

How do we move from smart and tested solutions to broader impacts? Scaling up tested and proven innovations is key to tackling today’s development challenges. However, moving from pilot interventions to broad-impacts requires a well-designed strategy.

Testing and prototyping innovations are essential elements of the “Sustainable Use of Rehabilitated Land for Economic Development” (SURED) project in Ethiopia, which is financed by Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) is supporting the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) in developing develop strategies for scaling-up innovative solutions which focus on rehabilitating and protecting land through sustainable land use.

However, SURED not only intends to promote best practices, but goes a step beyond. The project aims to enable the Ministry to adopt and integrate the scaling-up methodology and processes into its own management system. In the long run, integrating scaling-up principles is expected to support the efficiency of implementing large volume public investment programmes.

Scaling up in action 

Through promising pilot approaches to use land in a sustainable manner, the project and its predecessors have been supporting the rehabilitation of an estimated total of around 600,000 hectares of land in the Ethiopian highlands, equivalent to six times the size of Germany’s capital Berlin. Now, SURED is focusing on adopting and disseminating these solutions beyond the pilot intervention areas.

From the 29th July to the 2nd August, the SURED team came together in a kick-off workshop in Addis Ababa to develop strategies for describing their successfully tested innovations. They are currently defining products for larger-scale implementation such as community managed natural resource governance, protection through production and participatory land use planning.  

Authors and contacts:
GIZ Scaling-up: Sabrina Storm, sabrina.storm@giz.de
GIZ SURED: Michael Glueck, michael.glueck@giz.de
and Tewodros Gebreegziabher, tewodros.gebreegziabher@giz.de