Ethiopia, Czech Republic discuss cooperation on climate resilient agriculture, water sector

Addis Ababa March 8, 2023 (FBC) – Consultations were held between the Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and mission from the Czech Republic.

The purpose of the meeting was to present Ethiopia’s ongoing development plan, and future perspective and reach an agreement on sectors of priority to be indicated in the upcoming Development Cooperation Agreement that is to be signed between the two countries.

It is known that the Czech Republic has supported Ethiopia in the water, agriculture, sustainable land management, and geological sectors through programs and projects that are being implemented in the Southern Regional and Sidama States.

The consultative meeting was chaired by Semereta Sewasew in the presence of representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Planning and Development, and Ministry of Water and Energy.

Presentations were made by the Ministry of Water and Energy on the Czech contribution to the Geological and Hydrogeological Map compilation and a brief presentation was made by the Ministry of Planning and Development on significant assumptions of the 10 years development plan and priority sectors and implementation strategies.

Agreements were reached to continue prioritizing the two sectors to enhance collaboration for support for youth in the agriculture sector, promote and invest in food value chains, sustainable land management for participatory development, improvements in nutrition, hygiene and sanitization, capacity building, humanitarian assistance, trade and investment as well as undertaking national geological and hydrological maps on 1 :1,000,000 scale maps.

The delegation from the Czech Republic was led by Vilma Anyzova, Head of Programs for Africa at CzechAid included martin Sefr, Head of Programs for Ethiopia at CzechAid, and Katerina Manova, Deputy Head of Cooperation at the Czech Embassy.

Within the framework of development cooperation (ODA), the Czech Republic has been active in Ethiopia to a greater extent since 2001. Since 2011, Ethiopia has been one of the priority countries for Czech development cooperation.