Sesame Warehouses Open Export Opportunities for Farmers in Amhara and Tigray regions

Four New Warehouses to Benefit Over 41,000 Smallholder Farmers

Dansha, Tigray, Ethiopia – The U.S. Government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), inaugurated a new sesame warehouse in Dansha on March 27th with the Ethiopian Federal Cooperative Agency. This is one of four new warehouses constructed over the last 18 months in Tigray and Amhara Regions.

USAID cooperated on the construction of two warehouses in Tigray with the Setit Humera and Dansha Aurora FCUs and two more warehouses in Amhara with the Metema and Selam Farmers’ Cooperative Unions (FCUs). The 20,000 Metric Ton storage capacity in the four warehouses will allow the FCUs to purchase more sesame from their combined 41,713 member farmers. USAID’s investment of $1.4 million and assistance in facilitating $611,605 in loans from the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia—a financing first for the bank and FCUs—was instrumental in construction of the warehouses.

USAID’s goal is to bring these four FCUs into the export market by delivering necessary support including providing technical assistance in good agricultural practices, post-harvest handling and quality inspection and grading. Increased sesame production and better storage of the crop in a well-managed warehouse will improve quality so that these FCUs will meet the international market demand.

USAID will continue to invest in new technologies to benefit smallholder sesame farmers and expand agricultural export opportunities for Ethiopia including innovation grants to leading FCUs for sesame cleaning machines to enable entrance into U.S., EU and Japanese markets.

Developing the sesame value chain is an important part of USAID’s Agricultural Growth Program-Agribusiness Market Development Project, known by its Amharic acronym AMDe, part of the U.S. Feed the Future initiative.