Canadian Lutheran World Relief (CLWR) is supporting Support for Sustainable Development (SSD) with a three-year agriculture and livelihoods project in Chifra Woreda of the Afar Region of Ethiopia.
Although SSD’s previous Chifra Irrigation Based Integrated Development Project (2018- 2021) had positive results, the gains were subsequently eroded due to several factors including civil conflict, drought, locust infestations, torrential rains, and flash floods. The resulting declines in productivity have left people to resort to coping strategies like migration, selling livestock, borrowing money from relatives and money lenders, finding day labour, and reducing their food consumption. The project will repair and strengthen the irrigation infrastructure built during the previous project and use an Agro-Pastoralist Field School (APFS) approach to improve household food security through improved institutional capacity, increased agricultural production and productivity, empowerment of women and youth, and improved natural resource management and climate change adaptation.
The project will serve 1,000 agro-pastoralist and pastoralist households (i.e., 6,300 individuals), including 600 households in irrigated cropping and gardening, 200 women in saving and credit cooperatives, and 200 youth organized into seven groups. Over the three years, the project will receive co-funding support of US$150,000 from the Afar National Regional State government.