Southern Ethiopia faces food insecurity due to poor soils and harsh environmental conditions, limiting crop production. Despite the region’s potential for food and feed crops, inadequate access to agricultural practices and fertilizers hampers exploitation. Legume crops like soybean and cowpea enhance soil fertility through symbiosis with nitrogen fixing bacteria (rhizobia) and phosphate transferring arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These legumes are poorly adapted to southern Ethiopia, necessitate the need for microbial inoculations. SOSforEthiopia aims to seek optimal indigenous symbiotic partners (rhizobia and AMF) as biofertilizers to improve soybean and cowpea cultivation at smallholder farmers’ fields in southern Ethiopia. This collaboration between Belgium (UGent, UCLouvain) and Ethiopia (AMU) aims to enhance scientific and societal capacity building, identifying rhizobia and AMF for biofertilizer development, and improving scientific knowledge, skills and resources at AMU.