Strengthening Resilient Food Systems in Ethiopia

Ethiopia is already living with climate change. Rains that used to follow a familiar pattern arrive late or fail altogether. Droughts and floods that were once occasional are now more frequent. For smallholder farmers, pastoralists and low-income urban households, these shifts are expe rienced as failed harvests, lost livestock, rising food prices and increased debt. Climate risk has become a core development risk (Abeje & Alemayehu, 2019; Kone et al., 2024).

In response, the Government of Ethiopia has developed an array of strategies and frameworks, including the Climate-Resilient Green Economy Strategy (CRGE, updated Nationally Determined Contributions, the National Adaptation Plan and the Ten-Year Development Plan. These docu ments set out a vision of climate-resilient, low-carbon growth. At the same time, debates on food systems have become more prominent, with growing attention to nutrition, environmental sus tainability and rural transformation.

Agroecology has emerged at the intersection of these debates. Rather than a single technology, agroecology is a way of organising farming and food systems that works with ecological pro cesses and local knowledge. It focuses on soil health, water conservation, diversity of crops and livestock, local seeds, trees and fair markets. For many Ethiopian farmers and pastoralists, these ideas build on long-standing practices.

What is new is the effort to recognise and support them in national policy, including through a dedicated National Agroecology Strategy. CCC-E, ESFSAC and Haramaya University commissioned a study to examine how Ethiopia’s cur rent climate and food-system policies, and the institutions that implements them, support or constrain the expansion of agroecology.

This brief distils that work into a narrative aimed at pol icy-makers and senior practitioners who must translate climate ambition into concrete choices about budgets, institutions and programmes.

STRENGTHENING CLIMATE GOVERNANCE AND AGROECOLOGY FOR RESILIENT FOOD SYSTEMS IN ETHIOPIA