This study explores the performance of Ethiopian seed systems from a customer's perspective. The study builds on the view that seed supply systems perform marketing functions such as developing new varieties of seed, multiplying the right quantity and quality, and distributing to the right places, at the right time, for an acceptable price. Hence, supply systems create value and satisfy customers. This study's contribution is twofold. First, customer satisfaction theory is applied to complex chains (i.e. seed supply systems) in emerging markets, with their specific contextual challenges. Second, it identifies the criteria that farmers use to evaluate seed supply systems and evaluates Ethiopian seed supply systems from a farmer customer's perspective, which can be used as a basis to increase customer satisfaction.

According to the World Bank, poverty is defined as a multidimensional concept encompassing low income and consumption, low educational achievement, poor health and nutritional outcomes, lack of access to basic services, and a hazardous living environment. It uses a poverty line of US$1.90 per day as an indicator of extreme poverty (WB, 2017).Unlike most of the rest of the world, the total number of extremely poor people in SSA is increasing, from 278 million in 1990 to 413 million in 2015 (WB, 2017). In 2015, SSA was home to 27 of the world's 28 poorest countries and had more extremely poor people than in the rest of the world combined. While the average poverty rate for other regions was below 13% as of 2015, it stood at about 41% in SSA (WB, 2017). Almost one in four people in SSA were estimated to be undernourished in 2017, representing about one-third of the 821 million people suffering from chronic hunger globally (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, & WHO, 2018).Sub-Saharan Africa region accounts for more than 950 million people, approximately 13% of the global population. By 2050, this share is projected to increase to almost 22% or 2.1 billion (OECD, 2016). Smallholder farms constitute approximately 80% of all farms in SSA (Gassner et al., 2019). In many of the countries, women comprise at least half of the labor force (FAO, 2015). However, food insecurity is increasingly concentrated in SSA. SSA remains the world's most food-insecure region, with almost one-fourth of people -over 230 million -being undernourished (FAO, IFAD, & UNICEF, 2019). Among all the regions of the world, SSA is the only region that recorded a 10% (17.4-27.8%) increase in the number of hungry people between the periods of 1990-1992 and 2014-2016. Globally, progress in fighting hunger has been steady with the prevalence of undernourishment falling from 14.7 to 10.6 percent between 2000 and 2015, while the number of undernourished declined from 900 million to 777 million over the same time (FAO, 2017a). A lot of factors accounting for the low level of food security in SSA, though vast regional differences remain: high population growth rates, low productivity of agricultural resources, political instability and civil strife (FAO et al., 2019;OECD, 2016).The success achieved (food security) in countries with stable political conditions, economic growth and expanding agricultural sectors suggests that appropriate governance systems,