Ambassador Massinga’s Remarks at the U.S.-funded Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSA) Joint Learning & Close-Out Event 2026

Delivered in Addis Ababa on August 6, 2026

State Minister of Agriculture, Ato Desalegn Teshale, distinguished representatives from the Federal and Regional governments,  implementing organizations,  ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning.

Minister Teshale, thank you for your wonderful remarks.

For nearly two decades, the United States has collaborated with the Ethiopian government and dedicated organizations—Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and Food for the Hungry—to prove a simple truth: resilience is not something we give people. It’s something we help them build for themselves, through skills, opportunity, and systems that endure long after any single program ends.

The numbers tell part of this story. The U.S. government contributed $462 million through the Resilience Food Security Activity, reaching more than one million Productive Safety Net Program recipients across Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray—roughly 13 percent of the program’s eight million beneficiaries nationwide. Since 2005, this effort has helped lay the foundation for Ethiopia’s own social protection system.

Today, as this chapter closes, nearly half of all participants have graduated from assistance entirely. That is not a statistic—it is a milestone. It means families have moved from dependency to self-sufficiency.

But the true measure of success lives in individual stories: a mother feeding her children nutritious meals because she learned improved farming practices. A young entrepreneur who secured financing, launched a business, and now employs his neighbors. Farming families who restored degraded land and rehabilitated watersheds, building livelihoods that can withstand the next drought or flood.

These stories point to what matters most: stronger local institutions, more capable government systems, and communities now leading their own development. Sustainability was never meant to be an exit strategy—it was the design from day one. Real success means that knowledge, skills, and community structures remain firmly in place long after our direct involvement ends.

That principle is already bearing fruit. Ethiopia is now funding more than 70 percent of the newly launched Productive Safety Net Program Six—exactly the kind of self-reliant outcome Secretary Rubio has said defines effective foreign assistance: aid that graduates nations to independence rather than sustaining decades of dependence.

In line with the America First foreign policy, the United States will continue targeted, life-saving support for refugees, internally displaced persons, and vulnerable populations, working transparently and accountably alongside the Ethiopian government and our co-funding partners.

So today is not simply a close-out ceremony. It is a moment to capture what we’ve learned, celebrate genuine innovation, and carry these lessons forward—because integrated resilience programming works, and its results can be replicated across Ethiopia and beyond.

None of this would have been possible without your extraordinary involvement. We thank the Ethiopian government for its steadfast engagement. We thank our implementing partners and every frontline worker, community leader, and civil society organization whose dedication turned plans into progress.

And above all, we recognize the communities themselves—the true owners of this success and the architects of their own future.

Together, we are building toward something larger than recovery: a future where every Ethiopian family doesn’t just survive hardship, but thrives with dignity, opportunity, and lasting self-reliance.

Thank you.