An AllAfrica feature from May 2019 followed Debebe Assefa, a grain trader from Bekoji in East Arsi Zone of Oromia, through the messy business of buying cereals from farmers and navigating Ethiopia’s wheat politics.
Wheat sits at the crossroads of price controls, imports, milling margins, and urban bread anxiety. Traders like Debebe see the gap between farmgate reality and official talk about self-sufficiency long before ministries publish neat harvest figures.
Food security in Ethiopia is never only agronomy. It is forex for imports, trucking costs, and political fear of bread queues in Addis Ababa.
As business and food-security archive, the wheat intricacies piece keeps a named trader’s vantage on a staple fight that still shapes Abiy Ahmed’s regime whenever global prices spike.
Sources: AllAfrica