Climate Smart Dairy Eritrea

The CSARIDE project promoted market-led agricultural development, building on the experience of the Irish partners who have been working on a pilot dairy project in Zoba Debub over the previous eight years. The pilot project was absorbed into CSARIDE with the overall objective of promoting inclusive, sustainable and climate-relevant transformation of the Eritrean dairy value chain to enhance food and nutrition security, reduce poverty, create job opportunities for young people, and promote resilience to climate change while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Objectives

The project targeted the following dairy value chain actors and the key public sector support agencies:

• Resource-poor livestock farmers
• Private and co-operative input and output market agents and service suppliers, including milk collection and processing entities and dairy farmers’ associations, as well as AI and veterinary services
• Small-scale entrepreneurs (e.g. Eritrea Women in Agri-Business Association)
• Public-sector bodies including the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), Hamelmalo Agricultural College (HAC), MoA, and regional governments (Zobas)

CSARIDE focused on the entire dairy value chain from farm to market in three Zobas, namely Debub, Maekel and Anseba (the main dairying areas in the country). The project complemented ongoing Ministry actions in those areas as well as other internationally-funded development projects in Eritrea linked to the EU Delegation in Eritrea, IFAD, FAO and ILRI.