Africa report

Ethiopia: enset, a miracle vegetable in the face of climate change

Audio 02:16

Everyone in Ethiopia has enset trees in their garden or backyard, usually in the dozens or even hundreds.

© promosa.org

By: Noé Hochet-Bodin Follow

2 mins

Ethiopians call it enset, but it is more commonly referred to as the false Ethiopian banana.

It does not produce any fruit, but is the staple food for around 20 million people.

Resilient to climate change and able to be planted at any time of the year, it is often nicknamed the plant against hunger. 

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With the strength of his arms, Dekenech Chalaro, 50, extracts the pulp from the stem and roots of the enset.

Here, it is only the women who take on this particularly trying task.

However, they do not just harvest the pulp, but recover every part of the enset.

“ 

We cook the pulp and feed the leaves to animals.

Then the fibers are used to make strings and hang roofs.

A juice called bulla is also extracted.

The bulla is then given to pregnant women

 ,” explains Dekenech Chalaro.

In the village of Dorze and in the rest of the region, everyone has enset trees in their garden or in their backyard, most of the time by the dozens or even hundreds.

At maturity, the tree can reach up to eight meters in height and produce around 70 kilos of food.

Abraham Gelaye has been cultivating it for five years.

“ 

Enset is much easier to grow than other crops.

It is enough to dig a hole, plant an enset root in it.

Then it spreads and grows on its own,

he boasts. 

After the harvest, I can earn almost 50 euros from it, whether by selling it in the form of bread, bulla or something else

.

»

This omnipresent and indispensable plant in the south of Ethiopia is still too little known throughout the world, regrets Professor Addisu Fekadu of the University of Arba Minch.

He recently embarked on a modernization of these cultivation techniques which date back several centuries.

“ 

We have recently implemented smart harvesting tools and fermentation technologies to improve yields.

It is by studying and working on its characteristics that we can make enset a plant that will be able to feed more than 100 million people within 40 years.

 »

Enset is usually available in porridge, a kind of potato or bread.

Professor Addisu has created a flour to multiply the uses.

“ 

It is then very resilient to climate change.

Finally, you cannot find a crop that yields as high as enset.

So it can be part of the new solutions to meet world hunger

 ,” he says.

The plant is already present in the region, in Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, but only in the wild.

► Also to listen: COP15: "319 million hectares are threatened by desertification in Africa"

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  • Ethiopia

  • Agriculture and Fishing

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  • Climate change