<h3>ABBI Weekly/June 6th, 2007</h3>
Tamene Norame, 38, always travels 24kms on foot from his home town, Kata, Kebele 03, to his place of work, Durame, located 12kms away from his locality. Each morning, he has to start traveling at 6.30 to reach his place of work at 8.30 AM. Both Kata and Durame are located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region (SNNPR). Tamene, married 10 years ago, lives with his four children two boys and two girls. The eldest daughter is eight and has not yet started going to school. He takes care of his family with a monthly income of 100 to 150Br.
Tamene is one of the 88 participants who displayed their products from June 01-03, 2007 at the exhibition held in Awassa, 270kms south of the capital, Addis Ababa. The exhibition under the title, 'Best Products of the South 2007', aimed at bringing the best products of the region together to create better market access. Tamene was displaying hand made farming implements, all of them made of metal. He used to make such farming implements in 1988, while he was an eighth grade student.
"When I completed high school, I traveled to several towns, including Addis Ababa, searching for a job, which was hard to come by," he told ABBI Weekly. According to him, the experience he has had for over 19 years of making farming implements is the only option to lead a peaceful and successful life
Back in 2005, Tamene formed an association along with his 11 colleagues. The members of the association, "Taza Traditional Metal Work", has now reached 15, of whom he is the chairman.
"I received a five day business management training together with other members when we first organized ourselves and we were the first to take a loan from the region's business development centers," he said. However, his association has never been given another training so far.
SNNPR, which covers about 110,000 square km of land, has close to 15mln people with 56 nations and nationalities. Although the region is well known for its resources, about 98 percent of the people are engaged in micro and small scale activities. The region's trade and industry bureau has allocated 67 mln Br to organize the people in associations to be embraced in the 44 Business Development Centers. It has so far packaged 20,000 of the 66,000 cooperatives found in the region.
Tamene told ABBI Weekly that he was hoping that his association would be a winner in the best products a competition organized by the Engineering Capacity Building Program (ecbp) and the trade and industry bureau of the region. The competition targeted the theme of developing awareness among the producers regarding the quality and market possibilities of their products. The competition was organized in four categories, textile, construction, wood and metal works and agro-processing. The winners of each sector were awarded electronic items as decided by four different juries. There was also an international jury, which was headed by a German marketing expert that selected the three best producers (one individual and two associations) that were awarded a ticket to Germany to participate in an international trade fair and receive study lour in the same country. Almost all of the participants were anxious about the prize in the international category.
"I want to go to Germany and share the experience of the Germans to upgrade the products that we are having now," said Tamene before the juries declared the winners.
Joern Bernhardt, Regional Program Coordinator with ecbp told ABBI Weekly that the competition would have an impact in the region.
"We are not taking the winners to Germany as tourists, rather their exposure is believed to bring a positive in ten region," said Bernhardt.
After the winners for the local prizes were declared, two associations were selected as the best producers of the region; Fana Food Processing Company and Gamu Andnet Weaving Enterprise. The single individual that drew the international jury's attention was Amaro Gayo Agro-processing.
The two associations; Fana Food Processing and Gamu Andnet Weaving are promised to have a study tour to Germany some time in 2007, while Amaro Gayo Agro-processing will participate in the largest trade fair of the world food and beverages that would be held in Anuga, Germany from October 13 to 17, 2007. In 2005, the fair attracted exhibitors and visitors from almost every country in the world making international contacts and indeed businesses. There were over 6,000 suppliers and 150,000 visitors from 156 countries, with 52 percent coming from other countries.
"I am very happy that Amaro Coffee is getting acceptance and appearing at the world market," said Asnakech Thomas, 48, owner of Amaro Gayo Agro-processing.
Born at a coffee plantation she is proud that her family comes from coffee land deep in SNNPR, Asnakech is appreciative of the recognition of Amaro Coffee. She told ABBI Weekly, "I hope coffee from Amaro would become accepted as Yirga Chefe, Harar and Sidama."
Planted six years ago on a 20ht plot of land her coffee placed first in a pre-selection process for Ethiopia's first-ever private coffee auction held in February 2007. She was a client of Fintrac's USAID-funded Agribusiness and Trade Expansion Activity (ATEA), an aggressive, market-led effort designed to energize four industry sectors in Ethiopia; coffee, hides, skins and leather, oilseeds and horticulture.
Amaro, located 500kms to the south of Addis Abab, is found in the Amaro Mountains, near Nech Sar national Park. There are over 10,000 coffee farmers in teh district, most of them are suppliers of the red cherry coffee, where over 80 percent are women. Asnakech's two coffee plants; 12ht near Kele (the major town in Amaro) and the remaining 6ht in Kore (also a small town in the district) create job opportunity to up to over 250 people during high seasons of coffee.
The exhibition appeared to have achieved the goal for creating the culture of competition among the participants from the 22 kebeles found in the region. Some of the participants that couldn's go through, especially at the international category, seem to be sullen and saying that they would come up with a better performance for the next event.
Tamene was one of these participants. He said that his association would be working on the value chain of products.
"For the next competition, we would definitely win, as we are going to work hard, and have learnt a lot from our counterparts at this exhibition," he told ABBI Weekly.
G. Meskel Challa, General Manager of the Micro and Smallscale Enterprise Development Agency under the region's trade and industry bureau said that his agency was contented with the outcome of the exhibition, and would provide the cooperatives with 18 types of business management and technical training as of now.
"About 90 percent of their products is consumed at the region's market. We are now trying to expand the market to the national level and then to the international one," Said G. Meskel.
According to him, the exhibition was part of their strategies to boost the production and quality awareness of the people engaged in the micro and small scale industry in the region. Ulrich Plein, Chambers and Associations Senior Expert with ecbp also seemed optimistic about the future of the region's potential to penetrate deep into the national and international markets. He said, "We are determined to bring Ethiopian companies to the world market, where such competitions could be used as instruments to improve competence among the people engaged in the sectors."
The Ethio German engineering capacity building program (ecbp) comprises four major components: reform of university education; reform of vocational basic and further trainings; promotion of institutional structures for applying quality management and quality standards; and strengthening the private sector and corporate development. It was established under the Ministry of Capacity Building (MoCB).