The investment plan for the country presents a set of five investment cases focused on agrifood systems sectors: mechanisation, animal feed, ranching, coffee rejuvenation and coffee processing. These investments are seen as fundamental enablers to address critical bottlenecks to agriculture transformation in the country.

Ethiopian agriculture heavily relies on smallholder traditional farming. It is mainly rain-fed and suffers from the variability of rainfall across the year and across the country, which often leads to water stress, crop and livestock failure. Developing a combined rain-fed and irrigated agricultural system that uses different irrigation technologies with night-water-storage facilities, rainwater harvesting techniques, and water lifting mechanisms from lower levels with smallholder drip systems and micro-sprinklers is part of the solution to these challenges.

The cattle population of Ethiopia in 2021/22 was 66,260,987 (CSA, 2021/22). The cattle feed in Ethiopia is primarily open grazing and crop residues. The high population of livestock with high dependence on meagre grazing and crop residue and the extremely low percentage use of improved feed highly requires strong action to secure the availability of animal feed.

Ethiopia has a high potential for establishing disease-free or livestock export zones for ranching as it has productive rangelands, globally renowned cattle breeds for the ranching and beef industry, and more than 1.1 million hectares of land available. However, the country has not yet benefited from ranching business.

Coffee cultivation is another important investment opportunity, with approximately 5.8 million smallholder farmers being directly involved, contributing to the livelihoods of over 25 million individuals across the country. Coffee is the mainstay of Ethiopian export, while farm level productivity is low as it is dominated with 65% old coffee trees above 21 years. There is a high potential to improve its productivity by replacing old trees with new improved trees or by stumping the old trees, and to improve processing of coffee beans through new processing facilities or equipping the old facilities with better technologies.

The total investment is USD 1,646 million and is expected to directly benefit 2.7 million farm households while benefiting 14.3 people indirectly. These national initiatives will enable farmers to increase both crop yields, enhance cropping intensity by extending production cycles throughout the year (by facilitating irrigation during dry seasons), and increase livestock productivity. In addition to the benefits to farm households the investment cases will enhance national export income and heavily contribute to overall poverty reduction efforts and bring about positive income changes.