Benchmarking Best Global Practices in Ethiopian Leather Sector

The leather industry of Ethiopia has been regarded as a priority sector with the expectation to present many opportunities to the country’s economy. Having a huge raw material and trainable human resource bases and extended value chains, it is anticipated to contribute to employment generation, export earnings, government revenue and other multiplier effects to the rest of the economy. Despite many efforts made to enhance the growth of the leather sector, the overall performance and development are far below expectations. The declining trend in capacity utilization, deterioration of quality of raw hides and skins, low level of technology of leather manufacturing, low level of productivity of manpower, material and machinery, poor marketing strategies, non-availability, or difficulty in getting specialty chemicals, etc., have been among many manifestations of its low performance. To strengthen the competitiveness of Ethiopian tanning industries, the government of Ethiopia has signed an agreement with the government of India. The title of the project was “Implementation of Benchmarking (Technology upgradation) for selected seven Ethiopian tanning industries”. The overall objective was to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of seven selected export-oriented tanneries to produce finished leather. Some of the achievements of the project are an increase in productivity by direct processing from pelt to wet blue without piling and selecting at pickle stage, the capability to produce different types of finished leathers in all the tanneries and improved environmental performance of the tanneries. Some of the tanneries have scaled up the production of newer types of finished leathers to the bulk stage.