The Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HoA-REC&N) conducted its first Annual Review Meeting on the HoA-ESR project in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at HoA-REC&N headquarters in Gullele Botanic Garden on July 15, 2021. The review meeting sought to update the donor, SIDA on progress in the year 2020 and onwards in the implementation of the HoA-ESR project. The HoA-ESR, funded by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, under the Regional Development Cooperation for Sub-Saharan Africa, is part of the organisational efforts to contribute towards the “whole of society approach” to biodiversity conservation and achieving long-term environmental sustainability in the Horn of Africa region. Ms Ulla Andrén, Head of the Regional Development Cooperation in SSA and Mr. Ayele Kebede, Program Manager of the Regional Development Cooperation for SSA, who also serves as the contact person for the HoA-ESR,attended the annual review meeting. In addition to the Horn region-wide progress updates, which also included important achievement on the Demand Driven Action Research (DDAR) knowledge component, the implementing partners that delivered progress updates include Environment and Coffee Forest Forum (ECFF) jointly with the New Millennium Women Empowerment Organization (NMWEO) on Kafta-Shiraro and Gash-Setit (KS-GS) Trans-boundary social ecological landscape (Ethiopia-Eritrea); Ethiopian Wildlife Natural History Society (EWNHS) on Lake Abbe and Lake Assal-Dafo (LALA) Trans-boundary Landscape/ Seascape  (Ethiopia-Djibouti); Action for Development (AfD) on Omo-Mago landscape which is part of the larger Southwest Rift Valley Social Ecological Trans-boundary Landscape (SW-SEL) (Ethiopia, Kenya & South Sudan).