At the Babul Kheyer community kitchen in a working-class neighborhood of Addis Ababa, hundreds of people, mostly elderly men and women and a few young women with children, sit in line and wait for lunch to be served. Today’s offering features traditional Ethiopian staples like injera flatbread and lentil stew, but it also features something less common: a fresh sauté of cabbage, eggplant and chiles.

Zenawi Woldetensay, founder and executive director of Ngân hàng Thực phẩm Trời mưa của Ethiopia, looks at the dish proudly. Today’s vegetables represent a long journey for the food bank team.

“In the first few years, we faced various challenges related to lack of awareness about the role of a food bank, instability working with farmers, and lack of logistics,” says Woldetensay. “Creating partnerships was a challenge, as most of the stakeholders on the food supply chain didn’t have awareness or willingness to partner with a food bank.”

Founded in 2019 by Woldetensay and other scrappy university students, the food bank saw great potential in Ethiopia’s food chain. The major agricultural producer wastes as much as 40% of all farm produce while more than 10 million people face food insecurity.

Not long after It Rains Ethiopia was founded and became a member of The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN), the COVID-19 pandemic hit, spiking food insecurity and complicating logistics. In 2021, the food bank largely ceased operations as conflict in the Tigray region exacerbated security issues.

“There was a moment where we thought food banking might not yet work in Ethiopia,” he says.

But Woldetensay and his team persisted. They mapped out key agricultural regions and began reaching out to commercial farms. In 2024, after many unsuccessful inquiries, they finally broke through with a company called EthioVegFru, a farm largely exporting to European supermarkets, which agreed to donate its surplus to the food bank. In the first week, they collected more than 800 kilograms of fresh vegetables.

“The very first delivery meant so much to our team,” says Woldetensay. “It wasn’t just about receiving produce; it was a moment filled with hope, purpose and a real sense that our work truly matters, not only to us but to the people we serve.”

The partnership between It Rains Food Bank of Ethiopia and EthioVegFru was a perfect fit. Because of the nature of exporting —  filling orders with strict standards for things like size, shape and color of produce —  the farm always has some surplus.

“We are happy to have this partnership because before we would just dump surplus produce,” says Esayas Mangstu, general manager at EthioVegFru. Wasting nutritious food pained him but he didn’t see any affordable alternatives before the food bank came knocking. “We are happy that these vegetables are now going to people who need it.”

The humble partnership soon snowballed. In the first year of working with EthioVegFru, the food bank recovered 60,000 kilograms of fresh produce.

The eggplant and cabbage saute being served at the Babul Kheyer center represents just one of the nutritious meals of fresh fruits and vegetables served to more than 5,000 people each day in the Kuas Meda neighborhood.

Partnering with community organizations like Babul Kheyer and seeing the direct impact is driving It Rains to expand further.

As a young food bank with strong potential, It Rains was welcomed into GFN’s Accelerator Program in 2024 to receive targeted technical support and catalytic grants to support their growth. A year later, it was selected to join the first cohort of GFN’s Agricultural Recovery Hub. Through in-person training and monthly virtual Community of Practice Sessions, It Rains is learning from other food bankers around the world how to recover and distribute produce efficiently.

“It is so important to have this kind of exposure because you can see where you are as a food bank and where you could go,” says Feven Abraham, product sourcing and fundraising coordinator at It Rains.

But there was a key barrier: EthioVegFru had more surplus produce than the food bank could transport. It Rains only owned a minivan and couldn’t carry much produce in it. They would often rent a two-ton truck to collect produce, but it was expensive, occupying almost of third of their operating costs.

Thanks to catalytic grant funding through GFN’s Accelerator program, the food bank was able to buy their own 4.2-ton truck. With double the trucking capacity and a freed-up budget, it’s propelling It Rains forward.

With new horizons opened by the new truck, It Rains has signed agreements with two more commercial farms that will be donating surplus produce.

“Every kilogram [of fresh produce] recovered translates into meals that would otherwise have been wasted,” says Woldetensay. “Our agricultural recovery program has been playing a significant role in impacting a large number of beneficiaries reaching more organizations.”

It Rains recovered 193,000 kilograms of food in 2025, serving an average of 20,000 people per month, all before purchasing the new truck.

For Woldetensay, his worries that food banking wouldn’t work in Ethiopia have vanished. The only question now is how to continue expanding their impact.