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activities WORLDWIDE

Consulting ENGINEERS since 1977

Ethiopia is one of the Sub-Saharan Africa countries most seriously affected by land degradation. Land degradation is a major cause of the country’s low and declining agricultural productivity and is thus inevitably intertwined with persistent food insecurity and widespread poverty particularly in rural areas which continue to affect the vast majority of the country’s population.

In order to reverse these devastating trends, the Ethiopia Government gave high priority to effectively combat land degradation. The LAND project is part the multi-donor funded National Programme for Sustainable Land Management (SLMP which aims at reducing land degradation in agricultural landscapes and to improve agricultural productivity of smallholder farms, specifically targeting “high potential” areas that are increasingly becoming vulnerable to land degradation and food insecurity.

The objective of the LAND Project is to improve agriculture productivity for smallholder farmers in selected watersheds of 18 woredas in Oromia, Amhara and Tigray Regions. Main project beneficiaries will be the rural population (approx. reaching 10,000 households), both women and men-headed farm households, in the target watersheds (174 micro watersheds in total covering 130,544 ha) being significantly dependent on agriculture. The LAND project is financed by way of grant from DFADT (former CIDA) and counterpart funds from the Ethiopian Government totalling to 13.2 Mill EUR. Executing Agency (EA) is the Ministry of Agriculture with its Natural Resources Sector responsible for the implementation of the overall national SLM Programme.

The outputs are focussed on watershed development and management and include:

  1. Rehabilitation of degraded communal and private land,
  2. Development of gender-sensitive community infrastructure (e.g. water harvesting, irrigation, water supply, rural roads, small bridges),
  3. Promotion of on-farm and off-farm income generating activities (farmland and homestead development),
  4. Financial management (Disposition Fund Managment).

Services Provided

Provision of national and international long-term advisory services to strengthen the technical, operational and management capacity of the MoA and other relevant EAs/IAs:

  • Implementation of watershed rehabilitation and development works with accompanied and integral technical capacity development support to sustainable land use management;
  • Support to proper implementation of watershed development plans (ensuring proper planning, design, specification, works supervision, acceptance of works);
  • Organization and facilitation of training programmes run by Regional BoA/BoARD for woreda and community level trainees;
  • Prioritization of infrastructure with a focus on measures with engineering complexity, high cost, potential hazard, or with human health implications;
  • Capacity building of Woreda Financial Heads, Accountants and Procurement Officers;
  • Advice to Regional BoA/BoARD to ensure adequate financial management of the program disposition fund;
  • Support to financial reporting and monitoring through periodic compliance checks of the financial management procedures.

(in joint venture/lead firm)