Key lessons from 20 years of programming in Ethiopia

Last updated:

27 January 2017

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Concern Worldwide started working in Ethiopia in 1973 with an emergency response. This paper documents the key lessons that have emerged since then.

Tiny saplings from the Balya Nursery transplanted onto an eroded hillside near Duguna Damot Shinke village. Photo: Concern Worldwide.

As in most contexts where Concern works, there have been events and challenges, natural shocks and emergencies , often unforeseen; this is coupled with ever changing relationships with the State, with donors and the humanitarian system, This paper tells the story of this journey.

It describes a shift from the nominally integrated rural development programmes that grew out of emergency responses (in the 1990s) through a period focusing mainly on emergency interventions (in the early 2000s), towards longer-term sector-based programmes (2004 to 2010) which have now developed into well-defined integrated programmes (post 2010).