Nuru: Equipping climate-vulnerable farmers to be resilient through cooperative agribusinesses

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent assessment, by 2022 the world had experienced weather events more extreme than those projected for 2100 in an earlier report. In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, climate change impacts are already presenting serious problems for farmers.

With 70% of its 29 million people working in agriculture in 2024, Ethiopia is especially at risk. Extreme weather and environmental changes are hurting its smallholder farmers and economy, reducing agricultural productivity, yields, and income, while increasing economic inequality. In the South Ethiopia Regional State, 90% of whose 7.5 million inhabitants depend on farming, failed harvests due to droughts caused by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation have displaced and limited food access for millions of households.

The country’s plan for meeting its 2015 Paris Agreement’s climate goals focuses on adapting its agriculture, land use and forestry to the realities of climate change.

Nuru equips farmers and their families to lift themselves out of extreme poverty by moving from subsistence livelihoods to thriving farmer-owned and farmer-led agribusinesses. It encourages farming men and women to become active participants in farmer organisations with the aim of forming cooperatives, which it believes can create decent job opportunities, increase food production, empower marginalised groups (especially women), and promote social cohesion.

Nuru Ethiopia supports farmer households with regenerative agricultural advisory services through training and extension cascaded by cooperative unions. Regenerative farming and grazing practices build resilience to climate change by improving soil and water quality over time.

With support from the Swiss Re Foundation, this project will deliver bundled business development services and invest in nascent farmer-owned cooperative agribusinesses that measurably improve business performance in four zones of the South Ethiopia  Regional State. It will strengthen profitable and professional cooperatives at scale to      sustainably increase productivity and incomes for farmers in new, early-stage and late-stage cooperative unions. The project will also scale the Nuru model to Melekoza special district, strengthening cooperatives, increasing productivity and incomes, and delivering nature-based solutions to vulnerable zones.

Nuru Ethiopia’s goal in this three-year project is to help the targeted farmers become resilient to natural hazards and manage climate risks sustainably. It will also deliver nature-based solutions to an environmentally vulnerable zone of 160 square kilometres in partnership with a late-stage cooperative union in Gamo Zone. The project is expected to reach six cooperative unions and 35 000 farmer households, benefiting more than 210 000 people through higher productivity and incomes.

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