EDI Strengthens Agribusiness Finance Readiness through FAO’s RuralInvest Toolkit

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) is advancing a targeted response to structural financing constraints affecting Ethiopia’s agribusiness sector. As part of this effort, staff from EDI’s Access to Finance and Market Linkage unit participated in the first specialized RuralInvest (RIV) training organized by the FAO Investment Centre in Nairobi from November 16–29, 2025.

RuralInvest is a globally recognized toolkit developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support evidence-based agribusiness planning and investment appraisal. Its adoption directly responds to findings from EDI’s Personal Initiative Training program, where repeated post-training assessments identified limited access to finance and low investment readiness as binding constraints for agripreneurs.

Through the training, EDI assessed the applicability of RuralInvest for national-level deployment to complement existing entrepreneurship development interventions. The toolkit helps our programs to enable agripreneurs to prepare bankable, data-driven business plans aligned with the requirements of financial institutions, investors, and development finance partners, thus addressing a critical gap between enterprise capacity building and access to capital.

In parallel, EDI engaged with regional stakeholders, including the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) and entrepreneurship-focused organizations in Kenya. These engagements identified opportunities for cross-border cooperation and market integration in priority value chains such as coffee, livestock, horticulture, and honey sectors with high employment and export potential.

By integrating RuralInvest with its Personal Initiative Training framework, EDI, working in partnership with FAO, aims to strengthen the full entrepreneurship support continuum, from mindset and skills development to financial readiness and market linkage. This approach contributes to building resilient rural enterprises, improving investability, and supporting inclusive growth across Ethiopia’s agri-value chains.