There might not seem to be anything extraordinary about an apple – until you witness how income from growing the fruit can help lift people out of poverty.
In 2006 Self Help Africa brought root stock for 3,800 apple trees from Spain and distributed them to farm producers in upland project areas of two existing area-based projects in the Oromia region of Ethiopia.
More than 40 individual and community nurseries grafted the fruit, while lead farmers in project areas were provided with technical training and assistance to pilot apple production on their farms.
Since then several hundred households in the area have planted apple trees, while efforts are underway at a wider level to secure new markets for the product, particularly in the markets and tourism businesses of the capital, Addis Ababa.
A father of eight children, Abara Gashawe is one of more than 60 farmers in the Huruta area who has been rearing apple trees.
The young trees have yet to reach maturity, but Abara is optimistic that within the next year or so he will be collecting a valuable bounty from his small orchard.
Kebebusa Meresha from Wolmera Choke village in Holleta District shares this optimism and says that the 105 apple growers in her region have already been organized into a fruit producers co-operative as they prepare to sell and distribute their produce.
A mother of two, Kebebusa says that she has already been selling the fruit that she harvests from her 32 apple trees in local markets, but that when the co-operative begins marketing on their behalf, they will be able to sell to fruit markets and other institutions in the city.
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