Avocado soon to be marked as Ethiopia’s major export: Report

Avocado is going to be the major export in Ethiopia. A program launched by the Israeli and United States development agencies is set to make avocado the East African country’s next major export product.

The joint program by USAID and MASHAV of Israel and the Ministry of Agriculture of Ethiopia has introduced more than 2,000 farmers with an avocado variety (Hass) imported from Israeli. In the last four years, the program has exported Hass from Ethiopia and find the results encouraging and worth expanding, Deputy coordinator of the project, Wale Getaneh said.

“The reason we focused on avocado over the last four years is that the international market for it is rapidly growing that Ethiopia has suitable weather for growing avocado, Getaneh said to NewBusinessEthiopia.com.

According to him, after familiarizing a few thousands of smallholder farmers with the avocado variety imported from Israel and teaching them how they can grow, the project has been exporting Hass avocado to the Netherlands by collecting from the farmers. “We started by exporting two tons of avocado four years ago. After we get good feedback from the importers, we decided to increase the volume annually including many smallholder farmers into the project,” he noted.

“When we exported the 14 tons, we made a trial by exporting eight tons using vessel to see the feasibility of the business for the private sector in the future. But the trial was not easy because of the not much-developed logistics sector of Ethiopia, which includes waiting long to the freezing container. But the avocados we exported using the vessels finally reached Rotterdam on the 36th day. It was encouraging and the feedback from the client was also very good,” he added.

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