The Need for Agricultural Transformation in TigrayPaper presented at the Grand Conference in Meqelle

The Need for Agricultural Transformation in Tigray

Paper presented at the Grand Conference in Meqelle

18-22 July, 2018,

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In this grand conference entitled QUO VADIS TIGRAY? BUILDING KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY AND SOCIETY in TIGRAY,I am honored to be KEYNOTE SPEAKER in the Session entitled AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION, LAND RESTORATION, POVERTY REDUCTION and FOOD SECURITY.

The Latin phrasesQuo Vadis Tigray, where is Tigray heading to, is a challenging question. On Yekatit 10, 1967, about 10 or 11 am, Gessesse Ayele, whose Nom de guerre is SUHUL, came with his five or six years old son to my TAHADU Office in Shire Endaselasse and said: “We know where we are heading to; we have defined our objective. Let us do whatever is needed of us all wherever we may be. We are leaving tonight.” Saying this, he bode me farewell. This objective was further refined through the armed struggle, which led to peace, national equality - as enshrined in the Ethiopian Federal Constitution – development and democracy. I believe, since then, Tigray had defined its goal and knew where it was heading to, at least until recently, thanks to its Tegadelti children.

The second part of the Conference’s title is Building knowledge-based Economy and Society in Tigray. When we at TDA established Qalamino High School and Meqelle Institute of Technology (MIT), it was precisely bearing this goal in mind that we did so. And I am proud to say that both institutions have produced hundreds of Tigrayan technologists and communication engineers that have made themselves the pride of Federal institutions. One would have wished, though, that those two institutions could have been replicated in other zones of Tigray Region and produced thousands more during the last two decades or so. I have no knowledge what the present status is of these institutions. Were we perhaps a little bit ambitious, at the time?

MR. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Now to the title of the Current Session:

The terms Agricultural Transformation, Land Restoration, Poverty Reduction and Food Security are hugely important and inter-related. I will not go into dealing with them in detail; I think others will do that. Oxford dictionary defines transformation as marked change in form, nature or appearance. Generally speaking, when a country moves along an economic-development path, its agriculture sector modernizes, becoming more efficient and less labour intensive, while simultaneously, manufacturing and service sectors grow and absorb more surplus labour from agriculture. As development text books show¹, there are several phases of agricultural transformation: The first phase begins when productivity per worker and unit of land rises through effective usage of agricultural mechanization. The second happens when increased productivity creates surplus that raises national income through taxation and government intervention into the rural-urban terms of trade. The third takes place when the agriculture sector is progressively integrated into the macro economy through improved infrastructure and market links. The fourth stage takes place as and when the agriculture sector plays a role no different from that of other industrial sectors. At this stage, a higher degree of scientific farming like drip irrigation and related agricultural pursuits have entered into the mechanization system.

Previous Governments before the EPRDF had madesome attempts at agricultural transformation in specific project areas, including that of Tigray. The project in Tigray, TahtaiAdiabo and Hadegti Agricultural Development Unit (TAHADU), supported by the World Bankand started in 1973, was based in TahtaiAdiabo and Hadegti weredas, capitals of which are Sherraro and Yirga or Badme, respectively. Yes Badme. I was there heading this Ethiopian project to implement it on an Ethiopian Badme land. Its objective was to transform agriculture in those two sites with two five-year development project phases and thereby improve the lives of in-situ and transient smallholder farmers. Twenty four thousand farm families (about 120,000 persons) were to be organized in villages with water supply facilities, clinics, milling facilities, dispensaries,village schools, access roads and 5 ha of land allocated to each farm household. Two big siloes were to be constructed at Shire Endaselassie where farmers could store their produce and from where they could carry out their sales to national and foreign markets. The Project, however, was doomed from the start having been born at the wrong time.

As far as Land restoration is concerned, it entailsrehabilitationof an environmentally degradedarea to its natural state to make itsuitable for humans, wildlife and plants. Here the experience of Tigray in water and soil conservation efforts, or land restoration, is commendable. The people of Tigray have been working on land restoration since at least during the Armed Struggle. Shewatta in Abergelle served as the centre for land restoration during the Armed Struggle. I remember TegadeltiMelesBezabih, Birhane Russia, Tesfai America, Affera Tecklehaimanot and many others from the Department of Agriculture of the TPLF working hard in Shewata and spreading the experience gained there to other parts of liberated Tigray. For example,the villagers of Shewatta learnt and implemented flood irrigation techniques from this site, managed to grow enough crops andwere ableto stay in situ during the famine crisis of 1984-5.

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The first international recognition for Tigray’s land restoration was given to Tabia Abreha-we-Atsebha when the energetic Tabia leader “Aba Hawi” (GhebremicaelGhidayBerhe) went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and received on 21 June, 2012 the award on behalf of his Tabia. Abreha-we-Atsebiha was about to be abandoned before the land restoration began under the charismatic leadership of Aba Hawi. Tigray, on a region level won gold in a U.N.-backed award for the world’s best policies to combat desertification and improve fertility of drylands on August 22, 2017 from the World Future Council, a foundation which organized the award with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Further, another recent success story was areport by a certain Cathy Watson to the Guardian on 21 January, 2017 about Land Restoration of Gergera, in Hayelom Tabia,Atsbi-Wonberta Wereda. The report says that after 20 years of painstaking, complex and multidimensional work, its hills and river valley have been restored and brought life back to this area. The reporter further makes the point that landscape restoration in drylands depends on water management, and that it can create a base for better livelihoods and jobs for youth who formerly left in droves. The reporter quoted Minister Eyasu Abraha, who was among visitors there, as saying, “I knew this place. It was abandoned and untouched. This is very incredible to me”.²The people of Tigray and the Regional Government have to be congratulated for their success in soil and water conservation activities. However, for the soil and water conservation efforts of Tigray to have lasting effects, there is need to study the natural corrosive forces and the socio-economic conditions contributing to land degradation.³

Poverty reduction involves various actions, including economic and humanitarian, aimed at permanently lifting people out of poverty. The concept was introduced by the World Bank and IMF in the 1990s as a new framework to enhance domestic accountability for poverty reduction reform efforts. As far as food security is concerned, the United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security (CWFS) defines it as, “the condition in which all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” The transformation of agriculture, therefore, becomes of critical importance visa-vis the other components of this session.

In view of the title of this Session, the question is: what had been done in Tigray in the past, and what is presently being done? What is presently being done has been dealt with a couple of days ago by Dr. Atinkut Mezgebo, Head of the Tigray Agriculture Bureau. As to what had been done in the past, an attempt is being made here to outline some of the actions taken early on in Tigray. Immediately after the victory of the armed struggle, a few of the steps taken by the TPLF show how much concern it had in regard to the rehabilitation and development of Tigray. The TPLF was committed both to the rehabilitation and development of Ethiopia in general and Tigray in particular right after victory was achieved in May 1991. In July 1991, the Leadership of the TPLF asked me,as a founding member and President of TDA at the time, to bring along the TDA Executive Committee members, of whom I was the Chair, to Addis Ababa and prepare a Rehabilitation Programme for Tigray. Out of the five executive committee members of TDA, four of us, namely, Desta Asgedom, Araya Zerihun, Zemen Libnedingle and myself came along and formed a committee including additional members from Addis Ababa, such as Engineer Hailu Gebremariam of Ethiopian Airlines, Ato Mamo Bahta, former vice minister of economic planning of the Derg Government, and two others whose names I don’t remember at the moment. I chaired the committee which prepared a rehabilitation programme for Tigray, and the finalized paper was handed over to Tegadalai Abai Tsehaye.

Further, the Transitional Government of Ethiopia later asked international organizations such as the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), UNDP, and FAO to prepare Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Rehabilitation of Tigray (SAERT). FAO, which had a branch office at UNECA of which Dr. Mulugeta Bezabih was in charge, headed the SAERTs preparation and supervision of the implementation. The Regional Government of Tigray and TDAwere also involved in the preparation of the SAERT Project.⁴A SAERT Commission was established in Tigray and Tegadalai Abay Tsehaye became its commissioner. SAERT and ESRDF in collaboration began to implement irrigation projects in Tigray. These two Projects had tremendous prospects and were highly appreciated by the Tigray Regional Administration and international organizations such as the World Bank. In fact, the support of the World Bank for ESRDF and SAERT was such that the then President of the World Bank, Mr. James D. Wolfensohn (June 1995-2005) came all the way to Tigray and visited irrigation projects implemented by both ESRDF and SAERT. We showed him projects that were completed and some that were still under construction around Addi Gudom. Preparations of similar projects were underway first for the Amhara Region to be followed bythe rest of the Ethiopian regions. However, both SAERT in Tigray and ESRDF in the whole of Ethiopia were abruptly discontinued in spite of the willingness of the international organizations to continue to support the projects.

At the Federal level, emphasis has been placed by the Government on pro-poor policies, strategies and programmes since the EPRDF came to power. These include Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP), A Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), Agricultural Development-led Industrialization (ADLI) and Growth and Transformation Plans (GTPs) I and II. The rural Productive Safety Net Project (PSNP) has also been operating at country level since 2005. There was no shortage in terms of policies, strategies, programmes and projects at Federal level. Each region, including Tigray, adopted and adapted them to its own situation.

How effective have all these been in transforming agriculture, eliminating poverty and in achieving food security in Tigray? In spite of them, a good number of the people of Tigray, and many other Ethiopians, are still dependent on welfare programmes from outside donations. Total relief receivers from WFP between 2015 and 2018 were 7,997,218. According to the Central Statistics Report of 2016, the population of Tigray was 5,174,094 and 9.5 percent of them are dependent on foreign assistance up to this month,July 2018. Do we know how many of our rural and farming households have one decent meal a day, never mind about three meals a day? What kind of dwellings do they live in?How many of them get clean water? How many of them get decent and clean clothes on their backs? How many of them walk bare-footed; how many of them send their children to school. How many of the women give births in clinics and hospitals? We can keep on going. The answers to these and other benchmarks would give us an idea as to how effective those multiple programmes, strategies and policies have been.

The Ethiopian economy has been showing high overall growth for a decade and half. The National Planning Commission in its 2015/2016 Interim Poverty Analysis report said that poverty declined from 30.4 percent in rural areas in 2011 to 25.6 percent in 2016, while in urban areas, it decreased from 25.7 percent to 14.8 percent.⁵ This is attributed to the pro-poor programmes implemented over the past years. Regional comparison, on the other hand, indicates that poverty is still the highest in Tigray with 27% compared to other regions. On the other hand, Tigray has been doing well in terms of social development such as schools and universities. Tigray has in fact a good share offour universities, with a fifth one, the Pan African University of Adwaon the way. Overall, however, the attention of the Federal Government has been focused on the development of Addis Ababa and its surroundings, using the lion’s share of the country’s resources. This has resulted in the overflow of young Ethiopians from all over the country to Addis Ababa.

The Ethiopian Social Rehabilitation and Development Fund (ESRDF), which had small scale irrigation as its main component at community level, had invited a water irrigation specialist from Israel who toured areas where we had projects under implementation. After his tour, he was impressed by the availability of water resources in Ethiopia. On the other hand, he was very much disappointed, that with all the available water resources, Ethiopia always faces starvation. I also had an opportunity to visitfarmers in Israel, which sits on the most difficult terrain for agriculture,and the People’s Republic of China. You would be surprised how both countries’ farmers save, protect, and use productively their scarce water resource. By doing so, in the case of Israeli farmers, not only are they self-sufficient, but are some of the biggest exporters of fruits and vegetables to Europe.In the Chinese case, some studies indicate that 200 million smallholder farmers with an average of 0.65 ha each, and not even one hectare per farmer, are feeding 1.3 billion people.

Learning from experience of other countries in how they transformed their agriculture will be useful to take into account. China is believed to have undertaken an impressive smallholder agricultural transformation in recent history.How did China do it and succeed in alleviating hunger and poverty? Some of the transformative actions China undertook include investment in smallholder science and technology, rural roads, rural housing, urbanization and mechanization strategy: support of smallholder farmers’ access to mechanization and technological innovation, including access to digital platform and IT to ensure that the youth be motivated to stay employed in agriculture and its derivatives.⁶Therefore, I think there is a lot we can learn at least from China and Israel.

I want to raise an important issue here as one of my final points. It relates to the narrative that Tigray is poor. This narrative has been worked on for a long time both at political and academic levels. I remember, when I was a student at the then University College of Addis Ababa, Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, who was teaching geography at the time telling us students that, of all Ethiopian provinces of the time, he picked on Tigray and said “it was hopelessly poor. Its situation could only be improved if and only when its stone is turned into bread (dingay dabo yehoneelet now Tigray yemialfilet)”. The Derg’s President Mengistu Hailemariam went even further as far as ridiculing financial contribution of Tigray to the central Government by claiming publicly that it wouldn’t even cover the purchase of a pack of chalk“(letemeniem egza enquan aybeqam)”. I was in his prison cell when he made this statement, and to me it felt like adding insult to injury. This narrative should not be accepted. It should be totally and completely rejected.

Tigray is not poor in resources. It is only a victim of over a century of neglect and misgovernance. Firstly and most importantly, it has noble, farsighted, peaceful, hard-working, positive, forward looking and organized people with an ancient and heroic history, values and richculture. Tigray has young, aware, conscious and educated citizens. It has great material resources and to justmention some: adequate agricultural land with great potential water resources; livestock resources including beekeeping; great potential for crops, oil seeds and horticulture development; great potential for tourism and immense mineral deposits. All the above material resources, of course, need science and technology to be adequately exploited.

In 2016-17, from a small area in North-Western Tigray, 13 quintals of gold was gathered using traditional methods and submitted to the National Bank. With enabling institutional set-up, appropriate science and technology and permissible political institutions, Tigray can bring about development within a short period of time and set a great example, as always, to its sisters and brothers in the rest of Ethiopia.

I have a message to the youth - young women and men - of Tigray. You are the future and stakeholders of Tigray in particular and Ethiopia in general.Strive to learn from the experiences of your elders: such as courage, sense of direction, clearly defined objectives, commitment and determination to work towards the betterment of yourselves and by extension your community and to carry on the responsibility of caring and working for the best interests of the people of Tigray in particular and those of the people of Ethiopiain general. You need to be organized and it is imperative that you study the history of Tigray and Ethiopia in general and learn from it. You also need to create institutions and mechanisms through which you can ascertain that your elected leaders serve the interests of the people. When conflict arises at leadership level, leaders ought to conduct peaceful discussions and amicably resolve differences. Our history in leadership crises shows that instead of resolving differences amicably and peacefully, they are resolved by going for the kill.

Finally,I would like to make the following brief recommendations. Among immediate actions that need to be undertaken are:

 In order to buildknowledge-based economy and society of Tigray, the original objectives of Qalamino High School and Meqelle Institute of Technology (MIT)need to berevisited, reinstated and gradually expanded to the Zobas, resources permitting.

 The Regional Government of Tigray establishes different committees with various disciplines to study the bottlenecks and requirements for agricultural transformation in Tigray;

 The Regional Government of Tigray sends experts to China and Israel to learn how these countries transformed their agriculture and adapt and adopt such experiences to the conditions of Tigray.

4. Statistical Master-book of Tigray, prepared by: UNDP,ECA (FAO-ECA), TDA and the Regional Government of Tigray, March 1994.

6. GetachewDiriba, Overcoming Agricultural and Food Crisesin Ethiopia, March2018.