Pro-Poor Value Chain Development - Capacity.org

Chapter 7
Adapting the value chain approach to reach the poorest
rural households
Nicholas Nyathi and Genzeb Akele
BOAM’s work on value chain development has inspired other organisations to
apply similar approaches. In 2008 SNV was invited to participate in designing a
new USAID-funded project, Productive Safety Net Programme Plus (PSNP Plus) in
Ethiopia. PSNP Plus, which started in October 2008 and came to a conclusion in
2011, was implemented by a consortium of development organisations including
CARE Ethiopia, Catholic Relief Services, the Relief Society of Tigray and Save the
Children-UK. The aim of the programme was to complement the government-run
Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) which aims to enhance food security and
ensure that food-insecure households are able to maintain valuable assets such as
tools, equipment and livestock on which their livelihoods depend, for instance after a
drought.
PSNP Plus provided support to 47,414 households to gain access to financial services
and functioning markets with a view to enabling them to generate a regular income
and become more resilient. In this way, such households could subsequently
‘graduate’ out of the Government’s safety net programme. The main funder, USAID,
contributed close to 16US$ million for the project, with the other consortium
partners contributing 516,900 US$.
Attempting to upscale BOAM’s value chain approach within the context of the PSNP
Plus programme presented a new challenge for SNV. As described in the previous
chapters, BOAM typically focused on smallholder farmers producing enough to
meet their subsistence needs and earn a cash income. The PSNP and PSNP Plus
programmes, on the other hand, were explicitly targeted at ‘the poorest of the
poor.’ For the most part, this target group consists of food-insecure households that
operate at the most basic subsistence level. This chapter discusses a number of
adjustments that were made to tailor the BOAM approach to address the needs of
this group.
Introduction
The PSNP Plus strategy sought to support the development of four value chains;
honey, livestock (small ruminants), haricot beans and cereals (Ethiopia’s staple
food tef as well as sorghum, wheat and maize). The value chain approach was
implemented in 12 woredas (the Ethiopian equivalent of a district) in the four
regions of the country, Tigray, Oromia, Amhara and Southern Nations, Nationalities,
and People’s Regional State (SNNPRS).
PSNP Plus was based on a two-pronged, ‘Pull and Push’ approach. The ‘Pull’
(demand) component - largely modelled on the BOAM programme - referred to the
Adapting the value chain approach
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