Geographic area

 The East African Rift Valley, located in Eastern Africa, covers just over 2% of the continent and spreads over seven countries (Djibouti Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, and Uganda). 48.8% of the valley is found in Ethiopia covering 28.3 % of the country. The East African Rift Valley consists of a group of independent interior basins, extending from Djibouti in the north to Tanzania in the south, nearly half of them existing in Ethiopia.  The Ethiopian Rift Valley Lakes Basin (RVLB) is the Ethiopian section of the central lakes basin and also one amongst the 12 basins found in Ethiopia. The basin is administratively shared between  Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples (SNNP) Regional States.   

The initial focus area of the the Central Rift Valley (CRV), is a sub-basin within the RVLB and is comprised of lakes Ziway, Abyata and Langano and three major rivers called Bulbula, Meki and Katar. Lake Shala is geographically also situated in this area, but does not form part of the basin in hydrological sense. The CRV is located 150 km southwest of the capital Addis Ababa, between 38°00’-39°30’ E and 7°00’-8°30’ N and has an estimated area of about 1 million ha. The population is estimated to be about 1.5 million people  but is increasing rapidly with an above average country population growth rate of 3%. Currently the CRV area is faced with major challenges in addressing the issues of proper land and water management as competition and unsustainable use degrade these resources. The problems are interrelated and include poverty, lack of employment opportunities, deforestation (charcoal, land clearing), intrusion of people in National Parks (f.e. Abijata Shala Lakes National Park), overgrazing, low agricultural productivity, groundwater of low drinking quality, over-fishing of lakes and even industrial expansion. Because of the fact that the CRV is a closed basin, relatively minor interventions can far reaching impacts. 

Over the course of last year, the HoA-REC established a branch office in the town of Ziway in the Central Rift Valley area. Initially the focus of HoA-REC and its member organisations was on the CRV, but over time our working area has expanded to also include other parts of the Rift Valley. One of the aims of the branch office is to support its member organisations operating in the area, both directly and through the facilitation of partnership programmes. In addition, by establishing a resource center, the branch office aims to play a vital role in providing up-to-date information on natural resources and the environment in the region in English Amarigna and Afaan Oromo to various organizations that include civil society, government, higher learning and research institutions and  the general public. last, the office aims to facilitate the promotion of sustainable eco-tourism in the area and to play a major role in improving the local tourism economy to alleviate the direct pressure on scarce natural resources.     

Resource centre:          

We are currently collecting as much information as possible from various sources, so that this material can be made available in our office. To date most of it is in English, but we aim to have a substantial part of it translated into Amarigna and Afaan Oromo over the next few months. Although the number of items is not that high at the moment, we do have some interesting material on various issues ranging from research undertaken in the Rift Valley area to policy briefs as well as books on co-management of natural resources and community-based tourism training materials. Currently the items can not be taken out interested people are free to come in, browse and read some in our office. It is also possible to take the items out for making some quick photocopies as long as they are returned on the same day.

Support to member organisations

Providing support being one of the aims of the branch office, it is always ready to provide assistance to the several HoA-REN member organisations operating in the Rift. This support can be in the form of creating a platform for linking member organisations with (international) agencies working in the area on natural resource management interms of bringing them together to discuss future potential developments and collaborations in the area. The HoA-REC and several HoA-REN member organisations have been a member of the Central Rift Valley working group (CRV wg), a forum that meets once every two month to inform and discuss each other of their activities, projects and  advocacy activities that can be carried jointly. Until recently these meetings were held in Addis, but from now on they will be held in the Ziway branch office once every two months.

Eco-tourism promotion

The Centre and Network believe strongly in following the approach of economic diversification. To this end, one of our and our members focus areas is eco-tourism development. To this end, the HoA-REC is currently working closely with the Ethiopian Sustainable Tourism Alliance (ESTA) and the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS, also a member of HoA-REN) and several other endogenous organisations and supporting the development of three community conservation areas. To read more about this programme, please click here. As part of our eco-tourism programme, we also aim to work on marketing and promotion of the area and we are currently supported by several international organisations to develop a high quality map of the area, something which is currently not available for tourists. Because we see the strong potential of the area for eco-tourism development as well as the strong link between conservation and eco-tourism, the branch office aims to promote this type of tourism to the area by providing tourists with information and maps of the places of interest. The office will also market tourism products such as souvenirs and postcards through its branch office.  

The Horn Re-greening Programme – Rift Valley component 

The Horn Re-greening Programme (HRGP) was initiated in 2009 by several member and partner organisations of HoA-REC who saw the need for more sustainable use of the regions scarce natural resources. The overall HRGP consists of 3 geographic clusters in Ethiopia and 2 other clusters outrside Ethiopia, namely Djibouti  and Somaliland. The Rift valley is one of the focus clusters in Ethiopia and initiated by several  member and partner organisations. S, namely Arsi Negele Concern for Environment and Development Association (ANCEDA), Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA), Oromia Self Help Organisation (OSHO), Selam Environmental Development Association (SEDA), Rift Valley Children Women Development (RCWD) and Vision of Community Development Association (VoCDA) . The main objective of the programme  is to “improve the livelihoods of  people in the target areas by decreasing erosion, improving soil fertility, the hydrological balance and climate change resilience”.

In the Rift Valley area the programme aims to achieve this in three ways:-          Rehabilitating patches of forest, woodland and rangeland and increasing the number of on- and off-farm productive trees in selected areas in the Rift Valley (with an emphasis on the Central Rift Valley)

- Supporting the  improvement of the livestock rearing system.

- Controlling the spread of invasive alien species (IAS) particularly Parthenium weed which is rapidly spreading in the area, and rendering farm land unuseable 

The “Ring of Lakes” tourism route

As evidenced by its diverse landscapes and eco-systems, the Rift Valley and its surrounding mountain ranges, have enormous tourism potential, which, if developed sustainably, can be one of the ways in  which to diversify the area's economy. The central approach in the “Ring of Lakes” eco-tourism programme, led by ESTA and EWNHS and supported by HoA-REC, is the establishment of Community Conservation Areas. This is essentially a new model and category of land-use in Ethiopia, recently designated by the Land Use Bureau. This approach simultaneously stimulates income generation as well as the conservation of natural resources. After an initial assessment of the Central Rift Valley, 3 areas where selected for the establishment of CCAs, based on several criteria, the most important one being marketability. ESTA and its partners strongly believe that the interventions need to be market based in order to achieve sustainability. The three CCAs that will be developed in the first phase of this initiative are: Tulu Gudo Island on Lake Ziway, Lephis area in Arsi Negele woreda and an area on the eastern shore of Lake Langano. 

Lake Ziway CCA

The proposed Lake Ziway Community Conservation Area (LZCCA) is found within the Oromia National Regional State in the Arsi and East Showa zones. The LZCCA comprises three islands, namely, Tulu Gudo, Galila, and Dabresina, as well as the Lake shore. Tulu Gudo is located in Ziway-Dugda District in Arsi whereas Galila and Dabresina are under the administrative structure of Adamitulu-Jido-Kombolcha District in East Shawa. Specifically, the LZCCA comprises two peasant associations called Bashira-Caffa in Arsi and Bocessa in East Shawa.  

The proposed LZCCA has high biodiversity and tourism potential based on the assessment. Specifically, the LZCCA islands offer a unique landscape for wildlife found nowhere else in Ethiopia. In addition to the biodiversity richness, the LZCCA also is home to historical monasteries that have been built by the inhabitants who are predominantly Orthodox Christian, reflecting the cultural richness of the local communities. The populations living on the isolated islands in the LZCCA speak the Zay language that belonged to the Semitic language family and restricted only in the islands only. It has been noted that the Zay language is among one of the threatened languages in Ethiopia given its distinctive origin and rarity.