Promoting rural areas in Albania as places to live and do business

Context

The project Sustainable Rural Development (SRD) works with businesses and the Albanian government to increase competitiveness and incomes in rural areas. The project seeks to build an enabling policy environment, establish innovations in agriculture and rural tourism and replicate them across the market. This takes place in the context of EU accession, promoting green growth and fostering digitisation and diversity.

Objective

Rural areas in Albania are becoming attractive places to live and do business.

Approach

In agricultural production the project focuses on greenhouse vegetables, fruits and dairy. For instance, innovative farmers are adopting biological pest control to increase quality and production. Market players such as input providers, exporters and public institutions promote and spread innovation to many farmers, leading to large-scale adoption.

In rural tourism the project promotes outdoor sports, agritourism and destination management. For instance, several agritourism providers and a tour operator have created a wine tour to attract international tourists. The model is being replicated by other agritourism providers and tour operators, creating tours based on their own unique selling points.

As such, partnerships are leveraged in order to test innovative processes and products. When projects are successful, the results are used to empower public and private partners to incentivise and replicate these innovations across the market, creating tangible results.

Besides fostering innovation, the project also aims to transform the entire agriculture and rural tourism sector into an innovation and knowledge-driven system. This includes improving the capabilities of public and private institutions, particularly towards EU Accession.

The SRD programme is co-financed by the Swiss Development Cooperation.

Last update: June 2023