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Europe & Middle East were major trade partners of Ethiopia. Particularly, there was significant & increasing demand of sesame seed, dry beans & green beans in these regions. While, Niger seed has had higher demand in countries of other regions like USA and Singapore. Their price was almost increasing until 1995 & showed decreasing trend until 2002 & recovered somehow in 2003. But, there was a consistency of import trend of these crops in Europe than in Middle East. In aggregate, these regions shared about 67.2%, 85.5% & 51.4% of the total volume & 67.4%, 92.9% & 51.8% of the total value of sesame seed, green beans & dry beans export from Ethiopia in the period considered, respectively. But, they shared only 13.7% of the total volume of Ethiopian Niger seed export. The major importer of Niger seed from Ethiopia was USA & shared nearly 60% of the volume and value of Ethiopian Niger seed export. Main determinants of commodities import demand were domestic production, quality & standard of export, market regulations of importers, season, packaging, culture & consumption trend, price of the products, re-exportation experience & trend.

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Berihun Tefera Adugna was born in Ethiopia, BSc(Agricultural Economics) from Alemaya University & MA(Regional & Local Dev´t Studies) from Addis Ababa University. He has been working as a socioeconomic researcher at ARARI. Mr Berihun is now a lecturer in Agriculture & Environmental Sciences Collage of Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia.

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