Description
The goal of the project is to prepare for the introduction of macadamia farming and processing to Ethiopia. This will be carried out as follows: - Creation of a concept note to be used to obtain the necessary permissions and support from relevant Ethiopian government authorities. - Identify and create a MoU with a relevant Ethiopian project partner(s) - Obtain the necessary permissions for the import of macadamia seedlings to Ethiopia, from both the Ethiopian government and either Kenya or Rwanda. - Identify and obtain a minimum 5-year access to an appropriate piece of land in Ethiopia to be used as a macadamia seedling farm - Create and equip a small capacity macadamia seedling nursery to test the viability and mortality of macadamia seedlings in Ethiopia - Transport and test a trial volume of 5000 macadamia seedlings to the Ethiopia seedling farm - Create high quality grafted integrifolia macadamia seedlings that can be used in future as genetic material for future seedling nurseries in Ethiopia. - Recruit and train an initial group of minimum 250 farmers to accept the macadamia seedlings in three different locations of Guji Zone of Oromia State, Southern Ethiopia - Conduct trial transplantings of initial seedlings with the trial group of coffee farmers in the Guji Zone - Pending success of the trial volume, create a business plan for presentation to investors for the scale up of the project with a two-year goal of 300,000 macadamia seedlings distributed, and a processing plant constructed.