Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement (PRIME) Project

The initiative, known as the Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion (PRIME) Project, aimed to support resilience among pastoralist communities in Ethiopia's dryland landscape. The project was designed to be transformative, achieving scale through market approaches to livestock production and livelihood diversification. The project focused on five key objectives: improving the productivity and competitiveness of livestock and livestock products, enhancing pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, strengthening alternative livelihoods for households transitioning out of pastoralism, ensuring learning and knowledge management, and improving the targeted, sustained, and evidence-based interventions for the pastoralist households. During the reporting period, the project continued its work in developing market systems through business-to-business events, exposure visits, business expansion grants, trainings, and technical assistance. The project supported regular quarterly dialogues of the Rangeland Councils and organized multi-stakeholder consultation workshops with the USAID-funded Land Nurturing for Development project on communal land registration and certification. The project also implemented a mobile banking pilot, which received approval from the National Bank of Ethiopia and started in January 2015. The pilot aimed to create more than 2,000 jobs and benefit 42,000 households by providing access to different financial services through mobile phones and nearby agents. The project's business expansion grants supported the expansion of private veterinary pharmacies, livestock fattening grounds, milk collection, and feed production. The grants also facilitated the scaling up of women's shoefattening businesses, with 125 women were expected to benefit from this activity and 2,259,500 ETB was expected to be invested as a result of this activity. The project's emergency feed and fodder provision supported over 25,000 reproductive and productive animals, protecting the milk supply in 12,000 vulnerable households. The project also implemented a crisis modifier activity, which provided supplemental feeding for vulnerable households in Afar, Borena, and Liben zones. The project's field visits and workshops aimed to promote the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, such as composting and crop rotation. The project also supported the rehabilitation of micro-dams, ponds, and birkad, which improved the water supply and quality for the pastoralist communities. The project's overall goal was to increase household income and enhance resilience to climate change through market linkages. The project's achievements included the provision of business expansion grants, business-to-business events, and training activities, which improved the productivity and competitiveness of livestock and livestock products. The project's geographic focus was on the pastoralist areas in Ethiopia, with a specific emphasis on the Somali Region. The project's timeframes were from 2010 to 2017, with a total award of $56,772,799. The project's recommendations included the scaling up of women's shoefattening businesses, the expansion of private veterinary pharmacies, and the implementation of a mobile banking pilot. The project's overall impact was to improve the livelihoods of the pastoralist communities in Ethiopia's dryland landscape. The project's achievements included the provision of business expansion grants, business-to-business events, and training activities, which improved the productivity and competitiveness of livestock and livestock products.