Ethiopia’s annual honey production has increased to around 98,000 tonnes, according to Prime Minister Abiy.
The PM has attributed the growth to the government’s ‘Bounty of the Basket’ initiative in the country where nearly two million farm households are engaged in beekeeping.
Authorities launched the ‘Bounty of the Basket’ initiative a year ago to boost agricultural productivity at the household level.
With the support of the initiative, “We have managed to increase honey productivity to around 98 thousand tons per year through modern methods,” PM Abiy said in a tweet on Thursday.
The amount is significantly higher than the preceding year’s output which, according to a Central Statistics Agency survey, was 52,000 tons.
“Our target for next year is to double annual output,” Aby says, as the government seeks to tap into Ethiopia’s highly diverse honeybee flora and number of bee colonies – the highest in Africa.
The country remains one of the major producers of honey and beeswax in the world
However, its annual outputs are still way less than its production capacity. Various sources estimate Ethiopia’s annual production potential to be 500,000 tonnes of honey and 50,000 tonnes of beeswax.