ACBF-supported research centre, The Ethiopian Development Research Institute’s research and recommendations were instrumental in enabling the government in that east African country to establish the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX). The first initiative of its kind in Africa, the ECX is an organized marketplace, where buyers and sellers come together to trade, assured of quality, quantity, payment, and delivery. It opened in April 2008 with the vision of revolutionizing Ethiopia’s traditional agricultural sector into a more vibrant sector.
ECX was established as a new marketplace “eco-system” to serve the entire value chain in the agricultural sector, from farmers to traders, processors, exporters to consumers - while simultaneously providing support to linked industries such as transport and logistics, and the banking and financial services sectors.
As a national multi-commodity exchange, ECX guarantees low-cost, secure marketplace services to benefit all agricultural market stakeholders and its members to participate in fair trading. As of November 2010, the trading floor in Addis Ababa handled 200 spot contracts in such commodities as Coffee, sesame, navy beans, maize and wheat. In 2011 it had membership of over 200 clients, who trade through members, mainly farmer Cooperatives who represented 2.4 million smallholder farmers.
EDRI was established in 1999 by the Ethiopian government with support from the ACBF aimed at institutional and human capacity building, research programs, information dissemination and networking activities.
Through its research work, EDRI has conducted policy analysis that has demystified economic processes in the country. In several instances, EDRI has also positively responded to government needs and requests on policy and strategic matters. The research work undertaken by EDRI was largely focused on agriculture and rural development, macro-economic issues, economic policies, and poverty and sectoral development.
