While Ethiopia is largely an agricultural country, up to 40% of Ethiopia’s nutritious fruits and vegetables go to waste. When fresh produce goes to waste, it means fewer meals on the table for many. But It Rains Food Bank of Ethiopia is working to change that.

Nestled in Ethiopia’s capital of Addis Ababa, It Rains Food Bank is the country’s first food bank. Over the past year, the six-year-old food bank has worked steadily to expand its efforts to recover surplus crops and deliver fresh food to those who need it most.

The key to that progress? Agricultural recovery.

Agricultural recovery is the practice of collecting surplus produce that would otherwise be wasted and redirecting it to those who need it most. In 2024, It Rains established its agricultural recovery program to minimize food waste and alleviate hunger. The same year, the food bank distributed 64,159 kilograms of nutritious food that helped serve over 14,000 people.

From 2023 to 2024, the food bank’s total food distribution increased by 60%, an effort made possible through their agricultural recovery program.

The program didn’t launch without support. It Rains gathered insight from the community cultivated through The Global FoodBanking Network’s (GFN) Community of Practice sessions.

“The Community of Practice has created a huge opportunity for us to learn from other food banks,” says Zenawi Woldentensay, It Rains executive director. “We have been working with [GFN’s Phenny Omondi] closely in sharing our experience in the early stages.”

Through these sessions, It Rains learned from food banks with established agricultural recovery programs in areas like program evaluation, infrastructure and logistics, and expansion of operations. “The timing is very perfect … We are looking to learn more about agricultural recovery using these opportunities.”

In the program’s early stage, the food bank created partnerships with local, commercial farmers. More recently, It Rains has expanded its partnership by teaming up with the largest farm network in the regional state of Oromia.

The farm network’s proximity to the Koka Reservoir, one of the most fertile areas in Oromia, is a great advantage to the food bank’s program. Through this partnership, the food bank receives donations up to three times a week, including a variety of fruits and vegetables that would have otherwise gone to waste.

The produce collected goes to organizations partnered with It Rains, including childcare centers, orphanages, elderly and mental care institutions, physical disability support centers, and homeless shelters.

The donated surplus also helps the food bank reduce direct food purchases, which typically account for a large portion of It Rains’ food support budget.

And while It Rains hasn’t been directly impacted by global cuts in aid and funding, several organizations they serve have — with some even experiencing program shutdowns. In these cases, the recovered produce makes an even greater difference to the people the food bank nourishes.

In 2024, It Rains received 60,000 kilograms of recovered food. The program now accounts for 95% of the food bank’s operations. Alone, It Rains grew its food distribution by 30% in their second year in the Accélérateur, compared to its 2023 operations.

Growing in GFN’s Accélérateur

The significant growth of It Rains demonstrates their hard work and the effectiveness of GFN’s Accélérateur program, which provides targeted support that helps food banks scale their impact.

“GFN’s support has been very crucial for our growth” says Woldentensay. “GFN was with us, starting from the registration of our food bank … the initial phases of standardizing our food bank.

“GFN’s technical support and financial support have been the major factor for having the first food bank in Ethiopia.”

Now in the program’s second cohort, It Rains is joined in the Accélérateur by five African food banks in Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Mauritius, as well as three Asian Pacific food banks in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Including It Rains commendable strides, food banks in the Africa Accélérateur increased distribution by 33% year over year, feeding an additional 60,000 people.

À travers Accélérateur cohorts 1 and 2, food banks have expanded their reach and improved operations, underscoring the program’s goal of serving 10% more people each year. This trajectory positions participating food banks to develop even more ambitious expansion plans.

“Currently, we are recovering only around 60% of the total amount of the food that we [could] recover … because we are not in the position of having strong transportation capabilities,” Woldentensay says.

To start to close that gap, It Rains is enhancing their infrastructure and logistics capabilities by purchasing heavy-duty trucks. Eventually, Woldentensay and team want to close that gap entirely, transforming what’s possible for their operations, and the communities they serve.

“We want to create a huge impact,” he says.