Ethiopian women create innovative ag-tech solutions
A team of Ethiopian women has produced an innovative solution to trace the origin of coffee, a proposal critical to Ethiopia’s economy as the country’s coffee exports will soon face EU traceability regulations.
The team was part of a larger group of Ethiopian women students and professionals who attended a three-day Women in Tech Hackathon in Addis Ababa in April, designed to drive female empowerment in the economically critical areas of technology and agriculture.
To organize the event, the TRAIDE Foundation, Iceaddis and business training agency STUDIO.WHY partnered with the International Trade Centre (ITC) under its NTF V Ethiopia Tech Project, the humanitarian group CARE, and UN Women. The hackathon encouraged women to create market-driven business responses to challenges in the areas of ecommerce, traceability, climate change and farm insurance.
TRAIDE works with the Dutch government to empower national and international businesses to develop sustainable solutions for development challenges in emerging economies. It sees public-private partnerships as central to solving local development challenges.
‘This hackathon was very important. Half the population of Ethiopia is women, many of whom are involved in the agriculture sector, but we do not often see environments that empower women to be highly involved. Solutions for and by women would increase productivity and the economic growth of the country,’ said Kiya Girma, a business development officer for TRAIDE.
The event’s winning traceability team was awarded $1,500 and the opportunity to pitch their concept to the Agriculture Ethiopia symposium co-organised by ITC and Orbit Innovation Hub the same month.
‘The hackathon produced promising results,’ added Dagmawi Mekbib, a senior business development services expert at Iceaddis, an innovation hub and startup incubator and accelerator. ‘With the proper support, some of these ideas can be scaled to a product that can work to solve some of Ethiopia’s real-life problems.’
During the event, participants were divided into teams and presented with four challenges from their challenge owners: the traceability of coffee (ITC); e-marketing infrastructure (Iceaddis); and climate change and insurance awareness (Lersha and the International Water Management Institute).
Each group interviewed the stakeholders to understand the pain points and gains of the topic, refined their understanding of the problems based on those insights, then designed solutions.
‘Interacting with the challenge owners like ITC and hearing their perspectives really changed our way of thinking and helped us develop our ideas into actionable solutions,’ said participant Tigist Alemayehu, a farm mechanization engineer.
‘The hackathon also gave us the opportunity to voice our ideas freely and to lead our own projects, as well as helped us build important networks and connect with inspiring role models,’ added Alemayehu.
Creative innovation and disruption
At the final event, the teams pitched their concepts to a panel of three judges from the relevant fields. Alemayehu worked with a team that focused on developing digital training materials to create awareness of climate change, winning second place and $1,000 at the event’s closing pitches.
Hackathons are a powerful platform for fostering creative innovation and disruption in tackling complex issues, said Marleen Honders of co-organizer STUDIO.WHY, a Netherlands-based social change and sustainable innovation agency.
‘It’s a pressure cooker experience where participants learn new skills, get really challenged and inspire each other by using the methodology of design thinking,’ she said. ‘It was a chance for women to innovate solutions that they may not normally have in a field traditionally dominated by men,’ said Honders, who has led hackathons in Europe.
The 23 participants were selected from a group of 76 applicant students and businesswomen in the agriculture and technology fields from around Ethiopia. Some of the selected women traveled two days to reach the event.
‘What really inspired me was how eager these women were to know everything. They asked excellent questions,’ said Honders. ‘Their motivation, enthusiasm, and interest in the topics during all three days was really impressive.’
The support of organizations like ITC was critical to the event and to ensuring women are included in the tech landscape, said Girma, adding that she would like to see more such hackathons in the areas of education, energy, and healthcare.
About the project
The Netherlands Trust Fund V (NTF) (July 2021 – June 2025) is based on a partnership between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands and the International Trade Centre. The programme supports MSMEs in the digital technologies and agribusiness sectors. Its ambition is two-fold: to contribute to an inclusive and sustainable transformation of food systems, partially through digital solutions, and drive the internationalization of tech start-ups and export of IT&BPO companies in selected Sub-Saharan African countries.