Institutionalizing digital advisory services within the Government of Ethiopia, ensuring sustained delivery of information to millions of farmers

In September 2024, PxD concluded the five-year Digital Agriculture Advisory Services (DAAS) initiative in Ethiopia. Delivered in partnership with Digital Green, the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI), and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), DAAS significantly enhanced digital agricultural services across Ethiopia.

As the lead partner for the direct-to-farmer mobile phone-based component of the DAAS project, PxD tested and implemented several improvements to voice-based mobile extension services via ATI’s 8028 Farmers’ Hotline. Improvements to the inbound service included streamlined farmer registration, restructured content, and new livestock-focused advice. PxD also introduced outbound voice calls to deliver targeted advice to dairy farmers. The outbound calls focused on two use cases—calf and cow management, and artificial insemination—and were developed in collaboration with Land O’Lakes and the Netherlands Development Organisation. These upgrades expanded the hotline’s reach to approximately 1 million livestock farmers and were also used to improve advisory services for nearly 1 million crop farmers. The American Institutes for Research is conducting a rigorous impact evaluation of the artificial insemination use case. Preliminary findings show signs of a positive impact on artificial insemination practices, including increases in both the number of cows receiving artificial insemination and the number of heifers—which can result in milk productivity gains over time. Final data collection will take place in 2025.

PxD also developed advice for dairy farmers focused on a third use case—location-based, low-cost feed ration advice for farmers with crossbred cows. This advice comprised feed composition data from the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Livestock Systems (University of Florida) and Hawassa University, processed by the Food and Agriculture Organization feed ration formulation software. This advice was disseminated to farmers and government extension agents via a Telegram-based mobile chatbot. 

While DAAS made significant strides in digital agriculture services for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, its consortium members and funders recognized at the conclusion of the project that gaps still existed in institutionalizing the DAAS products in the MoA and the ATI. To address these gaps, the Gates Foundation awarded a new 12-month grant to PxD to lead the Focused Institutionalization of DAAS (FI-DAAS) project. Launched in November 2024 and running through 2025, FI-DAAS aims to strengthen institutional ownership and management of the DAAS products within the GoE.