Regional Reports - the European External Action Service

• Most rural markets around Dire Dawa are not organized and do not have organized
marketing system. In the existing marketing condition marketing middle men get a good
share of the final price of the products while farmers did not get a price which reflects the
actual value of their product. Presence of organized market and marketing system is
believed to bring an incremental benefit to producers. An improvement in the marketing
system will also help to minimize the smuggling of products to and from neighbouring
countries via contraband trade routes. Pack animals carrying firewood and charcoal have
been making a nuisance and creating traffic congestion in the main streets of Dire Dawa
on their way to the market.
b. NSA in Dire Dawa - from the previous mapping
The previous mapping noted that in Dire Dawa NSA in the different categories were in very
limited number and among those interviewed most had limited capacity. Furthermore the
study highlighted the fact that indigenous NGOs were a minority in the NSA landscape and
most of them were either branches of international NGOs or of national NGOs.
As for the Government capacity to interact with the NSA sector, it was found even more
limited than the capacities of the NSAs themselves. The previous study also highlighted two
phenomena:
• The dynamic in the Youth sector, which was being interested by a strong effort by
the Youth Association to create local (kebele) associations and clubs with the aim of
coordinating these organisations scattered in the territory;
• The fact that several regional association were operating in the town, to gather the
settlers coming from the different regions, but whose main aim whose to collect
financial contributions.
c. Major highlights of current findings
Dire Dawa’s NSA dynamic is highly influenced by these urban characteristics:
These characteristics can be summarised as follows:
1. A general high level of citizens’ mobilisation and relatively growing capacity of
self-organisation on the basis of the constituency’s interests and/or cultural
priorities;
2. Large number of organisations are operational on cultural and awareness raising
(e.g. HIV-AIDS) issues. There is high number of organisations who work on
cultural issues to raise awareness and shape opinion of the public. This typical urban
features has been found mostly in the field of Youth Association, where the
dynamics show an initial process of institutionalisation and also the attempt to
promote some income generation activities to fund organisations’ activities;
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