Agricultural Agency Receives Glowing Report

Dec 12 , 2020

The Food & Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), which has conducted an independent evaluation of the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), stated that the latter played a role in raising the GDP of Ethiopia by an average of 0.3pc annually. The ATA had engaged the FAO to conduct an independent evaluation of the Agency's impact on the country in terms of projects completed and its role in agricultural transformation and poverty reduction. In the decade between its inception and the time that the evaluation was conducted earlier this year, ATA was largely cost-effective and registered returns roughly 10 times its expenditures, which amount to around 140 million dollars, according to Maximo Torero Cullen, Chief Economist and Assistant Director-General of the FAO. The Agency, which has its headquarters in Addis Abeba and branch offices in Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and Southern Nations Nationalities & Peoples' regional states, employs close to 400 people. The ATA is partially funded by nonprofit organisations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).