Technologies Transforms Ethiopia’s Farmers to Net Wheat Exporters
After suffering from recurrent large-scale famines, Ethiopia has become a net exporter of wheat for the first time, owing largely to the deployment of technology. Other African countries should likewise embrace irrigation, mechanization, and fertilizers to improve food security and unlock the continent’s agricultural potential.
Ethiopia has long suffered from recurrent large-scale famines, most notably in the early 1980s, when at least one million people died, and millions more were displaced. This year, however, Ethiopia has become a net exporter of wheat for the first time, an extraordinary feat given its vulnerability to climate change and food-security crises
While many factors contributed to this accomplishment, it mainly reflects the central role that new technologies have played in transforming Ethiopia’s agricultural sector. By boosting crop yields and building resilience to extreme weather, these innovations have proven particularly helpful in regions facing worsening droughts and other climate risks.
The Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, established by the International Fertilizer Development Center, has been instrumental in deploying proven and high-performance agricultural technologies at scale, with the aim of helping farmers increase the production of millet, maize, rice, wheat, and other staples. As a result of the yield-increasing performance of these technologies, the area allocated to heat-tolerant wheat varieties in Ethiopia has grown from 5,000 hectares in 2018 to more than 2.2 million hectares in 2023, putting the country on the path to food self-sufficiency.
The “polycrisis” world of increasingly volatile global supply chains has accelerated the drive toward greater self-reliance. The war in Ukraine triggered a surge in food prices in Africa, with the wheat sub-index, for example, reaching a multiyear high in May 2022. Ethiopia was hit particularly hard, because it had been importing almost half of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Now the continent is reeling from the export ban that India, the world’s largest rice exporter, recently imposed on several varieties.
Amid this challenging environment, the Ethiopian government’s remarkable ability to use technology to boost domestic production and to reduce the risks associated with over-reliance on food imports may well represent a breakthrough. Such progress, especially in a country that was an agricultural basket case for several humiliating decades, offers hope for Africa, which has been on the frontline of the climate crisis, with food insecurity often fueling political unrest.