Ethiopia Reports Self-Sufficiency in Wheat Supply but Keeps Prices High

Ethiopia has recently reported achieving self-sufficiency in wheat production after the successful implementation of a government-driven agricultural revival strategy for the sector, despite concerns from the country’s wheat flour millers about the high prices they have to pay for locally sourced cereal grain.

For more than five years, Ethiopia, through the Ministry of Agriculture and in collaboration with private-sector partners, implemented the National Wheat Flagship Program (NWFP), culminating in a government declaration that it had, by the end of 2025, “fully replaced the import of an estimated 2.6 million quintals of wheat, previously imported in 2021, with domestically produced wheat, saving the country an average of $1 billion annually.”

“Through strategic irrigation expansion, mechanization and the adoption of climate-resilient seed varieties, Ethiopia has achieved a historic milestone — transitioning from dependence on wheat imports to full national self-sufficiency,” said Efa Muleta Boru, Ethiopia’s state minister of agriculture, last December.

He said Ethiopia, which still relies on imports to meet domestic demand, nearly 90% of it through the Port of Djibouti, had finally turned the corner in the production and supply of wheat, a turnaround the minister largely credits to the successful implementation of the $144 billion NWFP. The initiative was unveiled by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019 in key wheat-growing regions spread across the lowland and central parts of the landlocked country.

The NWFP initiative, to which the government of Ethiopia and its partners were contributing approximately $133.6 million, enabled wheat producers in the regions of Amhara, Oromia, Somali and Afar to enhance farm output through the provision of irrigation schemes, better input supplies such as fertilizers, improved seed varieties and mechanized farming.

The program focused on improving production from the existing 2.1 million hectares, with a target of harvesting at least 5.4 million tons. An additional 1 million hectares of irrigated wheat was to be added through the scheme, commencing with the 2022-23 marketing year, with plans to increase the acreage by 5% to 10% annually.

“The irrigation capacity of the regions will be increased to produce an additional 4.2 million tons of irrigated wheat at an average productivity rate of 4.2 tons per hectare,” said a previous report by the African Development Bank, one of the partners in the NWFP.

This yield per hectare is higher than the global wheat yield projection of 3.9 tons by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the period between 2025 and 2034.

Prime Minister Abiy previously said Ethiopia, which is still highly vulnerable to drought and has approximately 70% of its land classified as drylands, was deliberate in its plan to increase investments in intensified summer wheat production through irrigation, a technology he commended for enabling farmers to control and manage factors of wheat production and maximize yields.

Elsewhere, Ethiopia promoted another pathway for scaling production of wheat, the country’s most widely consumed grain: the Agricultural Commercial Clusters (ACC) strategy, in which smallholder farmers are organized in geographically clustered, high-potential areas “through market-driven and integrated value chain development of selected commodities,” according to the Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI), a government initiative.

ATI explains that the ACC is focused on access to and expansion of the quantity and quality of three key agricultural inputs — chemical fertilizer, improved seeds and extension and advisory services — as well as facilitating linkages to markets and other value chain off takers of the agricultural produce.

The ACC program is currently being implemented in the regions of Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, South Ethiopia, Sidama and Southwest Ethiopia Peoples’ Region, across 300 selected districts that have been grouped into 31 crop clusters and 11 priority commodities, including wheat, maize, tef, malt barley, sesame, soybean, tomato, onion, mango, avocado and banana.

Through the NWFP, Ethiopia and its partners tailored the strategy to address the country’s anticipated growth in demand for wheat, a cereal grain that has become a main staple food in this country of 113 million people. Demand has continued to surge, driven by factors such as rapid population increase, accelerating urbanization, evolving dietary preferences and rural-to-urban migration, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).

In fact, by the 2026-27 marketing year, nearly seven years after implementation of the NWFP commenced, FAS predicts Ethiopia’s domestic wheat consumption will reach 8.2 million tons, a nearly 3.8% increase compared with the 2025-26 period.

The surge in consumption is attributed to Ethiopia’s rising demand for wheat as a staple food, growth the report says, “is primarily driven by rapid population increase and accelerating urbanization, alongside evolving dietary preferences that increasingly favor processed wheat-based products such as bread and pasta.”

“As millions relocate to cities where traditional staples such as corn and sorghum are less dominant, wheat has become the preferred staple due to its accessibility and convenience,” FAS said in its Grain and Feed Annual report last April.

To meet this projected increase in demand, Ethiopia, in collaboration with other development partners, invested in the NWFP to increase the area under irrigated wheat production to 1 million hectares, commencing with the 2022-23 wheat marketing season, in anticipation of producing an additional 4.2 million tons and expanding this acreage by 5% to 10% every year.

“This will result in combined total wheat production of 9.6 million tons by 2025/2026, leading to 100% self-sufficiency and a surplus of 1.1 million tonnes of wheat available for export,” said a statement by the African Development Bank, one of the partners supporting Ethiopia in addressing pathways to achieving these ambitious wheat production targets.

By early 2024, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had taken note of the NWFP’s progress, among other agricultural production initiatives in Ethiopia, and went ahead and awarded Prime Minister Abiy its highest award, the Agricola Medal, which the agency presents to distinguished individuals who have played an exceptional role in advancing efforts toward global food security, improved nutrition and agricultural development. FAO said it recognized Abiy’s leadership “in promoting food security, nutrition, and the effort made towards wheat self-sufficiency.”

The NWFP entailed a blend of several interventions by the government and its partners, including a commitment to strong national leadership, widespread farmer-training programs, deployment of modern mechanization in both planting and harvesting, expansion of the area under irrigated wheat production and deliberate and sustainable investment in improved wheat seed systems.

The interventions were supported by several partners, including the African Development Bank (AfDB), AGRA (formerly known as the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa), the Gates Foundation, the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), all of which brought their expertise, finance and technology into the NWFP initiative, pushing up the volume and quality of Ethiopia’s wheat.

Other interventions targeted long-term solutions to Ethiopia’s frequent droughts and prolonged hot, dry seasons, with the Global Center on Adaptation, for instance, taking the lead in expanding Ethiopia’s climate-smart wheat systems, particularly the development, distribution and planting of heat-tolerant wheat varieties, while supporting producers’ access to digital tools and irrigation innovations to cushion their wheat farms from adverse weather.

With the increased wheat output, Ethiopia, which is still vulnerable to civil conflicts in some wheat-producing areas and unpredictable weather patterns, is expected to shift its focus to addressing existing market structure shortfalls and policy shortcomings, including pricing, taxes and trade tariffs.

For instance, the more than 500 wheat millers, with a combined installed capacity ranging between 4 million and 5 million metric tons annually, have previously indicated they are paying more for domestic wheat than for imports from low-cost regions such as the Black Sea region.

A survey by FAS in the 2025-26 marketing year showed domestic grain prices, including wheat, consistently exceeded international prices because of high input costs and constraints related to logistics and the supply chain.

Millers, FAS observed, prefer imported wheat because it “tends to offer better quality, particularly in terms of gluten content, which makes it more suitable for flour production.”

“With the rising domestic prices, imported wheat grain and flour have remained relatively more affordable than locally produced alternatives, offering a strong price advantage in the Ethiopian market,” FAS added.

With rising input costs, inconsistent wheat supply linked to logistical constraints, taxation issues and limited access to working capital, the sustainability of some of Ethiopia’s flour milling operations hangs in the balance.

Other market survey findings by FAS include millers’ actual utilization of wheat milling capacity “frequently falling below 50%, and sometimes as low as 20%.” Some of them “are shutting down their operations and shifting to other lines of business.”

Most wheat-importing millers in Ethiopia, a country that is not a member of the World Trade Organization and therefore has no bound tariff rates, have to contend with the reintroduction of the 25% import tariff, frequent foreign exchange shortages and constrained access to working capital to keep their operations running. These constraints have been blamed for the reported year-over-year decline of 82% in wheat flour imports from October 2024 to March 2025.

Although Ethiopia has declared a wheat production surplus, its wheat industry has a long way to go in meeting the needs of wheat flour millers and consumers of their products. This is an agenda that would require more deliberate policy decisions, not only to ease the country’s wheat business restrictions but also to promote a truly free market environment in which the cereal grain sector can sustainably thrive.

Shem Oirere is a freelance writer based in Nairobi, Kenya. He can be reached at shem@shemoirere.com.