Banana Shade-Planting Begins for Ethiopia’s First Women-Led Coffee–Carbon Pilot
Sheda Kebele, Bita Woreda | 4 June 2025
One hundred women coffee producers in Ethiopia’s lush Kaffa Zone, Bita Woreda, Sheda Kebele have taken the next decisive step in the “Empowering Ethiopian Coffee: A South-South Approach to Climate Finance and Carbon Credits” project, planting 5,230 banana seedlings that will bolster both climate resilience and farm livelihoods.
The activity follows a week-long third field mission (25 May – 1 June) during which OSSREA specialists, in partnership with Bonga University (BU) and local agricultural experts and authorities, completed a socio-economic and GIS baseline survey of all participant farms. Three trained women enumerators gathered household data while geo-referencing each plot; the survey confirmed that 68 % of the households were already practicing some form of agroforestry, a strong indicator for eventual Plan Vivo certification.
Seedlings on the Move
Discounted by 50 % under a collaborative agreement with BU, the hardened banana plantlets left the university nursery at dawn on 3 June, travelling 85 km to Sheda in a BU-provided vehicle. The project —funded by the Spanish Cooperation (AECID) grant provided the banana seedlings to the women farmers.
Community-Led Planting
Upon delivery, the women farmers and their spouses planted every seedling into freshly prepared 6 m × 6 m pits across plots of land of coffee agroforestry. Three kebele Development Agents and a Bita Woreda agricultural expert and a local implementing partner from Bonga University supervised spacing, mulching and watering to maximise early survival rates.
Carbon-Credit Pathway The banana component will diversify household income, improve micro-climates for coffee and enhance on-farm carbon sequestration—key metrics for registering Ethiopia’s first women-focused coffee-carbon project under the Plan Vivo Standard. Baseline soil samples, taken on 29 – 31 May by a consultant soil scientist, are now in the Ethiopian Engineering Corporations lab for verification and will be integrated with the survey dataset to finalize the Project Idea Note later this month.
With field establishment complete, extension agents will conduct fortnightly survival checks, while OSSREA prepares the social-environmental safeguards dossier required for full Plan Vivo registration—bringing Ethiopia’s women coffee producers one step closer to monetising the carbon stored in their shade-grown farms.