Ethiopia

ethopiaExtension in Ethiopia has gone through radical policy shift in the past 50 years, from feudalism to Marxism to a free market system (Kassa 2005). Currently, extension is mostly provided by the public sector, operating in a decentralized manner where extension is implemented at the woreda (district) level. The public sector is the single most important player, especially in terms of inputs, at the local level for smallholders. The private sector and NGOs (known to have many innovative and participatory approaches), while becoming increasingly important, are often left out of extension initiatives. In Ethiopia, limited extension is conducted by NGOs and the private sector, usually working through the woreda-level BOARDs (Davis et al. 2009).