After eight years as an Extension Agent at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture, Wubshet Adugna joined the SAFE program at Haramaya University (then Alemaya University) in 1998, selecting beekeeping as his Supervised Enterprise Project (SEP). He used his SEP assignment to demonstrate the economic differences of modern and traditional beekeeping practices to 120 farmers, and later – in 2003 – started his own beekeeping enterprise by setting up 50 beehives on 50 hectares of land in the Bonga area of Ethiopia’s southern region. 

Three years later, he established a honey and wax processing company, Apinec-Agro Industry PLC, which received the Food Safety Management Systems Certification by fulfilling the international requirements for food safety and hygiene. Apinec-Agro industry PLC, has so far, exported 400 tons of natural honey and 20 tons of beeswax to Norway, the Netherlands, Japan and the United States, with its supplies coming from 2000 (950 women) organic honey out growers organized into 14 Forest User Groups.

Mr. Adugna also founded the Apinec-Apiculture TVET College to train farmers, development agents, youth and other experts on bee product development, beekeeping and processing, queen bee rearing and breeding, and hive manufacturing. More than 200 women beekeepers from his program now manufacture and sell affordable hives from locally available materials. Today, his two companies, Apinec-Agro industry PLC and the Apinec-Apiculture TVET College have 28 permanent employees. 

Crediting the SAA Capacity building program for his success, Adugna plans to collect 300 tons of honey and produce 1.3 million bees wax foundation sheets, to cater for the increasing demands of the local and international markets period.

Retrieved from SAA E-Newsletter, issued in Nov 2022 "Impacting Skills in Agriculture"