Community-based sheep improvement – research helps breed strong rural communities in Ethiopia

Community-based sheep improvement – research helps breed strong rural communities in Ethiopia



Ethiopia is known for having the largest livestock population of Africa. Across the country, millions of cattle, donkeys, camels, chickens, sheep and goats live and work alongside people. The relationships between people and animals are long-standing, close and deeply embedded in culture and traditions.

Animals are power for transport and ploughing, they are food and nutrition, their skins and wool can be turned into useful products, their dung fertilizes fields and fuels cooking fires, and their sale pays for education and other necessities.

Yet millions of rural people remain locked in poverty. They work long hours to feed themselves, they battle harsh natural environments, often far from roads, clinics and markets and they and their animals lead far less productive lives than their urban cousins.

The picture is not all bleak. Public services and infrastructure are fast expanding, markets are growing, fueled by urban and export demands for food, and agricultural growth and transformation is a driving goal of government.

Communities are also taking power into their own hands, transforming local resources into assets that benefit them all. Animals are often at the heart of this transformation.

Empowering a rural community

Molale is a rural community in Menz – a well-known sheep region north east of Addis Ababa. It’s a community of 2700 households growing crops and raising sheep in the high hills. Their sheep are widely known for their good and tasty meat and they are well-adapted to life above 3000 metres.

In the past five years many of the households have moved from being struggling food aid recipients to being productive farmers with cash to feed and educate their families. Much of this was achieved through a novel community based sheep breeding and marketing initiative.

In 2009, a research for development project started in Molale involving the community, local extension agents, the government’s Debre Birhan agricultural research centre and international scientists from the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU, Austria). When the research team started to discuss ways to improve the sheep breeds the farmers had heard about a government scheme to distribute a more productive type of sheep known as Awassi. They wanted to try it out. Fortunately, as it turns out, there weren’t enough Awassi rams for Molale.

The community and the research team came up with a different approach. Recognizing the potential of the local Menz sheep, they decided to join forces to improve the local breed rather than count on an imported Awassi type. The result was a 5-year community based breeding program that trained farmers to improve their animals and keep proper records, helped them develop a breeding and marketing cooperative, changed selling priorities and empowered the community to express their own needs.

Later, when the government returned with Awassi rams, the community said ‘no.’ They instead asked for help setting up their cooperative.