In Ethiopia, Policy LINK Extends Leadership Training to Country’s Southwest

Participants in the March 7-10, 2023 leadership training in Arba Minch (photo: Policy LINK).

The Feed the Future Champions for Food Security (C4FS) Activity, part of USAID’s global Policy LINK program, has completed a four-day leadership skills training for 43 men and women working in Ethiopia’s agriculture and food security sectors. The participants, 30 percent of whom were women, gathered from March 7-10, 2023 in Arba Minch, the second largest town in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR).

Attended by representatives of the state council, president’s office, academia, research institutions, the private sector, civil society organizations, and community-based organizations, the sessions aimed to enhance the leadership skills of policy system actors, enabling them to actively contribute to and influence policymaking in the agriculture and food security sectors.

Of the 43 training participants, 30 percent were women (photo: Policy LINK).

Known as Leadership for Change (L4C), the training content covers continental and national agriculture and food security initiatives and policies; the status of national food security and nutrition in Ethiopia; leadership topics such as leading self and others and leading across boundaries; identification of systemic change areas; and the development of action plans to facilitate the proposed changes.

Addressing the relevance of the training, one of the participants said: “The training has helped me to learn about myself as a leader, identify critical gaps, and guide me to develop an individual action plan in order to apply the knowledge I gained from the training.” The participant added that the training “would also enable me to evaluate my team as a team leader and guide me on how to engage and develop action plans [for them].”

At the conclusion of the training, participants developed action projects in their groups, presented them, and created networking platforms on email and social media for continuous communication and collaboration in implementing their action projects.

Resources

To learn more about Policy LINK’s work in Ethiopia, please see here.