Self Help Africa is implementing three development programmes in Ethiopia - all focussed in the south-central regions of Oromia and Southern Nations and Nationalities provinces in the south-central regions of the country.
The organisation began its work in Ethiopia in the wake of the terrible famine of 1984 - implementing activities designed to enable communities to grow enough food to support housedholds throughout the year.
The projects currently underway are an integrated rural development programme at Sodo II - which is a continuation of earlier work in the Sodo area, and two further and geographically more wide reaching programmes designed to strengthen local farming cooperatives and unions, and to develop viable savings and credit cooperative structures respectively.
More than 17,500 farm families, up to 100,000 people are set to benefit from collorative activities that are underway with five regional agricultural co-operative unions, while in excess of 31,000 people, many of them women, have benefitted from small loans provided by savings and credit cooperatives that have been developed with the support of that programme. |
Situated in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent country. Apart from a five-year occupation by Mussolini's Italy, it has never been colonised.
Regrettably, the nation is better known for its periodic droughts and famines, its long civil conflict, and a border war with neighbouring Eritrea. It was following one of it's most devastating famines, in 1984, that Self Help Africa was first established.
Economy: A predominent agrarian society, Ethiopia depends heavily on agriculture, which is often affected by drought. Coffee is a key export, and vulnerable to international price fluctuations.
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