Habtamu Mekonnen Awoke

Habtamu Mekonnen Awoke is born in a farmer's family and grew up in rural Ethiopia. He holds a BA degree in Cooperative Business Management and obtained an MBA degree at Mekelle University. He has also fetched another MSc degree in Management studies at the Wageningen UR University in the Netherlands.

 

He started his work career in 2006 being a lecture of cooperative study courses at Wollo University, Ethiopia. He has also worked at this university as head Cooperative studies department and director of Institutional Transformation Office of the university. He has served at this university until August 2012.

 

From May to August 2014, he did a 4-month internship at Agriterra on a topic of “Input Finance Necessities and Modalities of Ethiopian Small-Scale Farmers.” When he successfully completed his internship hired him as a business advisor. He has served Agriterra till April 2018.

 

In May 2018 he left Agriterra and joined a private company in Ethiopia employed as Agribusiness Development Manager. He was responsible for the sorghum and malt barley value chain development, sourcing and managing of the quality of these grains across the entire supply chain of the company. However, he realised that he is much more interested in supporting cooperatives and smallholder farmers through his life instead of working for a private company. He also understood that Agriterra has a lot in it; like personal development, work freedom and self-steering team, etc. Thus, he has started missing working for Agriterra. He thought he could contribute to his country development a lot while he works for Agriterra, then he decided to rejoin Agriterra.
Since September 2019 he works as a business advisor under team Ethiopia.

 

Habtamu is a committed and result oriented person, having a hand on combined academic and practical work experience especially in cooperative governance, agribusiness and value chain development, project management and leadership areas.