Blueprint for integrating Digital Agroclimatic Advisory Services (DACAS) into the pluralistic extension system for Climate Resilient Wheat Value Chain Development (CREW) in Ethiopia

Ethiopia’s agriculture sector has strong strategic potential and remains central to national food and nutrition security, employment opportunities, industrial development, and export earnings. Within this broader sector, the wheat sub-sector holds particular promise due to rising domestic demand, sustained government commitment to wheat self-sufficiency, expanding irrigation opportunities, established research and seed system, and organised cooperative and extension structures that can support improved service delivery at scale. Yet this potential remains only partly realised. Wheat production is still highly climate sensitive because it is dominated by smallholder systems that rely heavily on rain-fed agriculture and face climate induced extreme risks. Farmers’ capacity to respond to these risks and take advantage of emerging opportunities is further constrained by the limited availability of integrated, digitally enabled agroclimatic services that are timely, user-friendly, localised, practical, and accessible. Although various institutions have made important efforts to generate and deliver digitally enabled agroclimatic information through different channels, these efforts have remained piecemeal and have not yet developed into a coherent, scalable, and institutionalised national advisory and extension system. The core systemic challenge lies in the fragmented nature of Ethiopia’s digital agricultural service landscape: multiple providers operate disconnected tools and data streams, interoperability is weak, coverage is uneven, and many initiatives remain isolated pilots rather than integrated digitally-enabled services. As a result, there are duplicate functions, which fail to achieve the required impact at scale and meet diverse service demands. This blueprint responds to these challenges by proposing a coordinated and interoperable DACAS system that links climate service, agronomic knowledge, digital platforms, and delivery methods aligned with smallholder typlogies within a functional national service architecture embedded in Ethiopia’s pluralistic extension system. The blueprint frames DACAS as an end-to-end service design and delivery system, not simply a digital messaging platform. Its foundation lies in farmer profiling to capture heterogeneity, service providers mapping, and a digital farmer registry to support more precise targeting based on production systems, agroecology, risk exposure, and user typology and capacity. Applying advanced statistical cluster analysis to a representative data from 2,031 sampled households across major wheat-growing areas, the result identifies three broad user groups named by their level of digitalisation capabilities: high, medium, and low. This has major operational implications. DACAS cannot be implemented through a single delivery model, business model, or standardised advisory package for all; instead, its design and delivery must be tailored to the needs and circumstances of these distinct user tpologies of smallholders. Building on the farmer profiling, farmer registry, and service providers mapping, the blueprint identifies several other key pillars for DACAS implementation. These include reliable climate data generation and agroclimatic analytics; advisory content development and localisation; multi-channel delivery systems that combine digital tools with human mediation; farmer uptake and behavioural response mechanisms; and feedback, monitoring, and continuous system improvement. Together, these pillars form the backbone of an integrated advisory ecosystem. The system depends on interoperability across meteorological services, remote sensing platforms, agricultural databases, and extension systems. It also relies on DAs and subject matter specialists, call centres, and other local institutions to support interpretation, build trust, and ensure last-mile delivery. For operationalisation, the blueprint proposes institutionalising DACAS within the recently ratified pluralistc extension service through a publicly led but collaborative model, implemented in phases through piloting, validation, and scaling. Public institutions, particularly the MoA and regional BoAs across their hierarchy, should provide policy direction, standards, coordination, data governance, quality assurance, financing of core public functions, and integration into the national extension system. At the same time, private actors, cooperatives, research institutions, telecom providers, EMI, and other partners need to contribute innovation, analytics, digital platforms, bundled services, and complementary delivery functions. This governance arrangement and harmonisation are intended to strengthen accountability, improve integration, and reduce fragmentation. Successful operationalisation should be guided by six interlinked principles: data quality and assurance, equity, co-creation, accountability and transparency, financial sustainability, and scalability. These principles are critical t avoiding another cycle of fragmented, supply-driven digital initiatives and to ensuring that DACAS becomes inclusive, trusted, and institutionally sustainable. The economic feasibility analysis provides a strong basis for prioritisation and policy choice. The blueprint estimates that establishing and operating the DACAS platform would require up-front investment and annually recurrent costs of about USD 865,000. While break-even is possible, economic viability depends heavily on farm size and service scale. Approximately 2,043 one-hectare wheat farmers or 4,087 half-hectare farmers would need to be reached for the system to break even, emphasizing larger farms would require fewer users and vice versa. This suggests that DACAS is less likely to be commercially viable for very small farms unless service delivery is organised through cluster-based approaches that reduce transaction costs and improve efficiency. The result of this analysis, therefore, supports treating DACAS as strategic ublic good agricultural infrastructure rather than as a stand-alone commercial product expected to recover costs quickly through user fees. The blueprint argues that Ethiopia needs to move away from fragmented, donor-driven digital pilots toward a nationally coordinated DACAS system that is publicly anchored, pluralistic in delivery, and phased in implementation. In the short-term, public investment should prioritise foundational systems, demand creation, inclusion, institutional coordination, and quality assurance. During scaling, public-private and other key stakeholders’ partnerships and platform-based approaches should be used to expand reach and improve efficiency. Over the longer-term, selective commercialisation can be introduced in service layers where viable, particularly through bundled services linked to inputs, insurance, mechanisation, finance, irrigation, and markets.