Pastoralist Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion (PRIME) Project Quarter 10 Report FY 2015

The project aims to enhance prospects for long-term development in the dryland landscape where the pastoralist livelihood system prevails. PRIME is designed to be transformative, innovative, and achieve scale through market-driven approaches to livestock production and livelihood diversification that simultaneously support dryland communities to adapt to a changing climate. The project works to meet five major objectives: Improved productivity and competitiveness of livestock and livestock products; Enhanced pastoralists' adaptation to climate change; Strengthened alternative livelihoods for households transitioning out of pastoralism; Ensure enhanced innovation, learning, and knowledge management; and Improved nutritional status of targeted households through targeted, sustained, and evidence-based interventions. During Quarter 10 (January to March 2015), PRIME implemented various activities to achieve its objectives. In the area of Improved productivity and competitiveness of livestock and livestock products, 10 trainings, two technical assistance interventions, three capacity building exposure visits, and 40 small business expansion grant activities were implemented in all target clusters. These activities aimed to improve market linkages between actors in the livestock and livestock productivity-related value chains. PRIME also facilitated the organizing of three livestock trade B2B events in all operational clusters, which brought together 135 livestock traders, cooperatives, and export abattoirs, as well as private milk aggregators, government officials, and community members. These events resulted in new and strengthened linkages between value chain actors. Additionally, PRIME supported the participation of ten Ethiopian export abattoirs, live animal exporters, and a camel milk processing plant from pastoral and agro-pastoral areas at the 2015 Gulf Food Fair conducted in Dubai, which resulted in total anticipated export sales of $13,730,500. In the area of Enhanced pastoralists' adaptation to climate change, PRIME continued to support different Natural Resource Management (NRM) and Climate Change Adaptation activities, including the regular quarterly dialogues of the rangeland councils, organizing and facilitating multi-stakeholders consultation workshops on the pastoralists' communal land registration and certification issue, and supporting communities' efforts on natural resource rehabilitation and enhancement activities. PRIME also supported the implementation of the Social and Behavioral Change (SAA) approach to address social and behavioral constraints to Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and facilitated participatory rangeland management planning processes that will contribute to pastoralists' resilience to the changing climate. The project is working towards institutionalizing the Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) process by the respective local and regional level government stakeholders to ensure local ownership, wider application, and sustainability of the interventions. The project's activities have resulted in various accomplishments, including the establishment of 22 village milk collection agents collecting milk from 250 households in several PRIME woredas, increasing incremental sales of the households they serve by 16,470 liters of milk valued at ETB 329,400 ($15,700). Additionally, the project has supported the expansion of fodder production and commercial feed production, resulting in the sale of feed/fodder valued at ETB 645,000 ($30,700) to over 200 households during promotional events. The project has also supported the establishment of fattening/holding grounds, which are expected to jointly have the capacity to handle 1,000-1,500 large ruminant animals and offer part-time employment to 30 new employees. The operation of these holding grounds is expected to improve the quality of the animals traded and increase the local demand for animal food and fodder.