Soil Degradation Outpaces Recovery as Ethiopia Builds National Coordination Forum

Jun 21 , 2026

Ethiopia mitigates around 25,000 hectares of land annually against soil degradation, a rate far below the 18 million hectares currently affected by acidity and salinity. The scale includes seven million hectares of acidic soil and 11 million hectares impacted by salinity, underscoring a widening gap between intervention and degradation. To address the challenge, the Ministry of Agriculture and the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) have launched the National Soil Health & Fertility Stakeholders’ Discussion Forum. The platform brings together the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency(ATA) , GIZ, and other partners to coordinate national soil management efforts. Officials say the aim is to shift from fragmented projects to a unified, evidence-based system. However, current recovery efforts remain insufficient to match the scale of land degradation.