Ethiopia Legesse Segaro (PhD)Meron Aregay Belachew2024-02-192024-02-192024-01-17https://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/1837Despite having Africa's largest cattle population, Ethiopia struggles to export meat due to various challenges in the livestock value chain. This qualitative study examines the challenges and opportunities faced by Ethiopian meat and meat product exporters in the global market, focusing on three aspects: government policies and macroeconomic factors, product quality and marketing strategies, and competitive advantages of Ethiopian meat exporters based interview. Interviews were used to collect data by asking different stakeholders in the industry, such as meat and meat byproduct exporters, livestock animal exporters, licensing bodies, banks, research institutes, quality controllers, logistic experts and associations. The interviews were coded and themed in NVivo 14. Based on the analysis, the main challenges for Ethiopian meat exporters that are currently affecting their business majorly are supply shortage and high production cost. The distribution strategy analysis shows that air transportation is preferred for chilled meat exports to the Middle East site has to reach to destination site freshly without spoilage, while sea transportation is used for meat by-products and some regions with high air costs. Ethiopian meat exporters mostly sell chilled meat to the Middle East, where Dubai takes the lead, meat by products to Far East Asia, and live cattle and camels to Egypt and Somalia, according to the analysis of meat export destination. Analysis of business strategy showed that pricing was the most important factor for the respondents. The export market analysis shows that a distinctive and appealing flavor makes Ethiopian meat and meat products competitive in the Middle East, despite higher pricing, with target market selection remaining crucial. Based on the analysis on factors to meat export success, respondent’s response were peace and stability, effective livestock regulations, ranch ownership, export standard compliance, illegal trade prevention, system modernization, market expansion, and value chain expansion as crucial success factors for meat and animal exports, with peace and stability ranked highest. Respondents emphasized that Ethiopian government policies and the overall Ethiopian economy significantly affect the meat export sector. Meat export brings foreign currency for Ethiopia, which has the largest livestock population in Africa and can take advantage of its geographic closeness to reduce expenses and time. The Ethiopian meat export sector can expand its markets and products by finding new customers and opportunities in the Middle East, Asia, US and Europe, and by creating more value added products such as processed meat by obtaining the required certificate for quality assuranceen-USThesis