On February 18, 2025, Fair and Sustainable (F&S) in partnership with Tanager convened key stakeholders from Ethiopia’s agriculture sector at the Haile Grand Hotel in Addis Ababa to celebrate a pivotal moment—the official launch of the Impacting Gender and Nutrition through Innovative Technical Exchange in Agriculture Plus (IGNITE+) program.
This five-year initiative aims to transform African agricultural institutions by strengthening their capacity to integrate gender and nutrition-sensitive approaches into their operations and agricultural interventions—promising a lasting change for small scale producers and food system actors.
IGNITE+ is an extension of the IGNITE program which Fair and Sustainable, and Tanager implemented between 2018-2024. To ensure sustainable integration of gender and nutrition, Tanager is working with six local service providers (LSPs) as implementing partners across its focus countries in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania. As an LSP in Ethiopia, Fair and Sustainable will continue to scale gender and nutrition technical assistance to agricultural institutions as providers of long-term support.
Elevating Women and Youth in Agriculture
During the launch, Hibiete Tesfaye, the General Manager of Fair and Sustainable emphasized on the importance of prioritizing women and youth to achieve sustainable agricultural development.
“This can only be achieved if institutions integrate gender and nutrition-focused considerations into their interventions and the benefits cascaded to women and youth,” said Tesfaye.
Representing the Ministry of Agriculture, Samson Adane, the Team Leader for Children and Youth Affairs Inclusion highlighted the dual challenges faced in the sector which includes lack of decision-making power among women, who play a vital role in agriculture and the high rates of child malnutrition coupled with growing concerns over obesity.
“To address these challenges, we must integrate gender and nutrition into our agricultural policies, ensuring women’s contributions are recognized and foster collaboration amongst key stakeholders to combat both malnutrition and obesity,” said Adane.
Strengthening Gender and Nutrition Outcomes through Local Partnerships
The IGNITE+ project builds upon the success of an initial six-year initiative that supported 35 African Agricultural institutions by delivering quality gender and nutrition technical assistance services.
Since 2021, Fair and Sustainable has been instrumental in strengthening the capacity of local institutions, ensuring lessons within the program and tools developed for gender and nutrition integration are cascaded and utilised by African agricultural institutions. Some of the key achievements as an LSP include:
- Strategy Development: Strengthening the capacity of agriculture institutions to develop and adopt gender-responsive and nutrition-sensitive approaches in their programming.
- Capacity Building: Delivering training on gender integration, nutrition-sensitive programming, and monitoring and evaluation including gender-sensitive facilitation skills.
- Tool and resources: Creating training curricula, facilitation guides, and knowledge materials for institutional use on gender and nutrition integration.
- Support to partners: Assisting IGNITE clients among them Digital Green, Sasakawa Africa Association, Africa Union’s Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (AU-PACA), and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to improve their gender and nutrition outcomes in their programming.
Read more how Fair and Sustainable as an LSP deepened its expertise on gender and nutrition https://tanagerlearninghub.org/?cypher-req=view-knowledge-center&id=8
Scaling Quality Gender and Nutrition Technical Assistance Services
Tanager’s Country Representative in Kenya, Maureen Munjua underscored IGNITE+’s commitment to strengthening African agriculture institutions to integrate gender and nutrition in a sustainable manner.
“IGNITE+ aims to support institutions to design and implement more inclusive programs that benefit women, youth, and vulnerable groups —and ultimately improve their nutrition outcomes,” said Munjua.
She further encouraged all partners to be involved in the implementation of the IGNITE+ program and be involved either as clients, local service providers or as ecosystem builders by committing to increased investments towards gender equality and better nutrition outcomes.
Key players, project partners and Tanager commemorate the Launch of the IGNITE+ project in Ethiopia with a cake cutting ceremony
A Collective Commitment to Inclusive Agriculture
The event concluded with a symbolic cake cutting ceremony, marking a shared commitment to building a more inclusive and resilient agricultural systems. Tanager and, Fair and Sustainable urged government entities, development partners, private sector actors and local agricultural institutions to join forces in championing gender-sensitive and nutrition-focused agricultural programs. With an established network of key stakeholders, they emphasized the need to cascade these efforts across all levels, ensuring lasting impact throughout the agricultural value chain.
Want to learn more or get involved?
Follow Fair and Sustainable, Ethiopia and Tanager for updates and communities. Together we can build an agriculture sector that leaves no one behind!
