Publications

The Chencha district in Southern Ethiopia has nearly 50 years of experience in growing highland fruits, including apples, pears and plums. Apples are marketed through the Chencha Highland Fruits Marketing Cooperative. SNV aided the cooperative by identifying problems constraining apple production and marketing in the area, and identifying several key intervention areas such as supporting apple fruit quality improvement activities, strengthening existing cooperative and coordinating overall sub-sector development. SNV provided capacity development services, which ultimately led to increased productivity, income and employment, ensuring the cooperative’s long-term sustainability.

SNV Netherlands Development Organization subscribes to these developments and devotes considerable part of its advisory services for capacity development in the tourism sector. SNV advisors work with a variety of organizations, stakeholders and actors, such as Ministries of Tourism, Tourism Boards, Hotel Associations, Community Based Tourism Organizations as well as with Associations of Tour Operators and many others. Against this background SNV East and Southern Africa brought together practitioners in the tourism sector to present and exchange experiences around the issue of Government Incentives to Boost Local Economic Impacts of Tourism.

This document is the outcome of that initiative. SNV and Rwanda’s ORTPN hosted a regional tourism workshop in Kigali Rwanda in October 2006. The workshop drew on ‘action research’ by SNV advisors in 6 countries and brought together SNV partners and advisors from East and Southern African countries.

The essence of practicing traditional beekeeping by Ethiopian small farmers, along with other farming activities, has been meeting basic subsistence needs but does not provide profit and capital growth. This while the potential is high because honey is often organic; however, official standards such as ISO and HACCP certification are needed to enter the international market. The approach and methods of SNV–Ethiopia have been to provide support to Ethiopian honey and beeswax processors and exporters individually in the form of technical advice and financial grants that could help them develop and implement improvements to support the growth of their enterprises. In addition, SNV aided in securing organic certification.

This practice brief shares SNV's experiences in supporting pastoralists in Africa to improve their livelihoods. It bringstogether a wide variety of cases from across the continent that draw out a number of commonalities in pastoralist practices, for instance their management of water resources in Tanzania and Niger. But it highlights as well the diversity of the contexts within which pastoralism operates, as seen in the contrasting scales of dairy processing in Kenya, Niger and Burkina Faso, or the different roles played by local brokers in the livestock markets of Southern Sudan and Benin. Working with pastoralists has taught us that they are not the traditionalists they are often depicted to be. They are adapting to rapid change as much as any other group in Africa. This Practice Brief highlights a variety of adaptation strategies, commercialisation options and institutional arrangements that are currently in use. These diverse experiences demonstrate that SNV support has helped bring about tangible improvements in pastoralist livelihoods, whilst increasing their contribution to economic  development in some of the most challenging environments in Africa today.

Brochure which describes the partnership between SNV and FLO (Fairtrade International). In 2006, a unique partnership was born. Responding to the need for an integrated, market-based approach to the challenge of persistent poverty, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and Fairtrade International (FLO) teamed up to help producers in the World South reach consumers worldwide via Fairtrade. As a result of the partnership, numerous farming communities in eleven African countries now benefit from expanded market access, increased production, employment and income, as well as broader social progress and greater control over their future.

This is the story of the partnership, the people involved and the progress made.

SNV’s approach to development is principally to work in an advisory capacity with meso-level organizations. Taking on this advisory role has considerable implications for the way that SNV handles issues. In essence, it is the quality of the advisory service itself, rather than the specific knowledge to be shared or transferred, that makes managing such issues successful. Clearly SNV advisers must be able provide guidance and support to partners and their staff to do this. At the same time SNV seeks to learn from other organizations that may be emphasizing the advisory process.

East African SNV programmes have undertaken an initiative to build new models for advisory practice, what we call ‘Building Advisory Practice’ (BAP). The initiative has examined in detail what characteristics constitute a quality advisory practice, what others are doing that SNV would like to emulate, and the best way to share the knowledge gained with the wider public. Meeting these objectives means building new ways of learning and sharing within SNV and with external partners and knowledge systems. This publication on private sector development is a major product in that endeavour.

The publication, as with the whole BAP process, has involved the energy, commitment and patience of literally hundreds of persons, from partner organizations as well as SNV staff, many of whom are acknowledged at the back of the booklet.

This book presents the approaches and lessons learned in The Business Organisations and Their Access to Markets (BOAM) programme.

National Biogas Programme Ethiopia: Programme Implementation Document (2008).

This study presents an implementation project document for the set-up of a National Biogas Programme (NBP) in Ethiopia, as a result of the high potential of the country in the biogas sector (feasibility study concluded that more than one million households qualified for biogas installation).

Study findings indicated that the average investment cost for a biogas plant amounts to €602. In order to encourage farmers to invest in biogas installation a contribution to construction cost is to be provided (€193) which would also increase the internal rate of return to 29%. Self-help and micro-financing form the remaining of the financing plan.

The required functions in order to develop the biogas sector include promotion and marketing (e.g. Government institutions, NGOs, private sector, mass media, microfinance institutions and cooperatives would be mobilized for promoting biogas), training (e.g. focus on both supply and demand side), quality management (e.g. rigorous quality control regarding plant sizing, construction, after-sale service, and user training), research and development (e.g. cost reduction of biogas installations), monitoring and evaluation (e.g. overall monitoring responsibility to be assigned to Ethiopian Rural Energy Development Centre-EREDPC), institutional support (based on proposals submitted to concerned parties), extension (e.g. slurry extension programme to be initiated), and gender mainstreaming (e.g. involving women in programme’s decision-making). The EREDPC and the Mines and Energy Agencies (MEA) are the leading parties in the implementation. The proposed contributors to the programme are rural households, federal and regional governments, external donors and SNV/Ethiopia.

SNV’s approach is to support the development of the NBP/Ethiopia and to build adequate capacity in the biogas sector within 5 years. Without excluding other sector stakeholders, SNV will primarily provide support to EREDPC, the National Biogas Programme Coordination Office, the regional Mines and Energy Agencies, and the regional Biogas Programme Coordination Offices.

The progress report is structured along the SNV result chain approach and is in line with the PID, EREDPC/SNV Cooperation Agreement, SNV Assignment Agreement, and with ABPP reporting requirements. This progress report is compatible with the reporting requirements by the Government of Ethiopia.

The basis of reporting is the content of the Assignment Agreement, which is following the result chain logic of SNV. For this a special monitoring format has been develop to present a comprehensive overview. This can be found in the table presented in the report, followed by a brief explanation in the chapters that follow; milestones & monitoring system, issues and solution, LCB work, knowledge and network brokering, report on NBPE activities, and the financial status.

Although good progress is made, the implementation of the 2009_1 period has not been as planned. Due to the introduction of the new working procedure within GoE (named BPR) most of planned activities experienced delay with frequent absence of staff trained ion biogas and key decision makers including the director general of EREPDPC.

The brochure is a compilation of various case studies illustrating the impact of SNV's work in the life of millions of people in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

It portrays the approaches and methods used by SNV to empower local communities, businesses and organisations to break the cycle of poverty by providing them with the tools, knowledge and connections they need to increase their incomes and gain access to basic services.