Highland bamboo value chains development to enhance local livelihoods in Southern Ethiopia

Highland bamboo has been traditionally used in building construction, wall partitioning, ceiling, doors, windows, and roofs and has contributed in people’s livelihoods. This paper focuses on pinpointing bamboo value chain, its opportunities, and challenges. Site selection and observation, review of existing knowledge, key informant interview and market assessment in the value chain, stakeholders’ consultation workshop, processors workspace visit, and group discussion were performed. We found that highland bamboo is a raw material, semi-processed and processed product and sold at different locations passing through different routes based on the request and demand of the customers in the value chain. We identified different bamboo landraces in the studied areas. However, there are knowledge gaps by processors on the use of the different races for different purposes. Traders buy bamboo culms based on their sizes by giving different grades. The price of the product varied from product to product depending on the quality of bamboo raw material/culm used and the time (man-days) required to make the finished product. Local processors’ capacity to produce well-finished products is affected due to lack of important machineries and tools. Therefore, introducing and promoting modern processing tools and machines through credit support systems are crucial to make processors more competitive in the value chain. Moreover, the study identified major challenges faced by bamboo growers, culm traders, and processors that have effects on bamboo value chain development. Therefore, it is important to work towards alleviating/minimizing the major challenges in the bamboo value chain considering all actors to strive towards improving the value chain.