The Global Agriculture and Food Security Fund (GAFSP) Steering Committee approved on, Wednesday, 3 November 2010 in Washington D.C., a USD 97-million grant allocations to three countries.
The selected countries are: Ethiopia (USD 51.5 million), Niger (USD 33 million) and Mongolia (USD 12.5 million). For Niger, the implementation will be done by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and for Ethiopia, by the AfDB and World Bank. The AfDB was represented at the Steering Committee Meeting by Mr. Aly Abou-Sabaa, OSAN Director. Country allocation was based on the recommendations of an independent external Technical Advisory Committee that reviewed all proposals received. The summary of the allocations to the two African countries are as follows:
· Ethiopia : US$ 51.5 million (implemented through the World Bank and the African Development Bank): Support to the Agricultural Growth Program that aims to sustainably increase rural incomes and national food and nutrition security, particularly by developing the untapped potential of well-endowed areas.
· Niger : US$ 33 million (implemented through the African Development Bank) will contribute to poverty alleviation by sustainably increasing the availability of agricultural products through water harnessing, and the development of small scale irrigation in the particularly vulnerable regions of Maradi, Zinder and Tahoua.
Mr. Aly Abou-Sabaa states that "these grants are welcome, especially for Africa, where recent figures show food price volatility is a growing concern and hit a two-year high. Further discussions are being held by the SC with respect of the other applications ".
The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) is a multilateral mechanism to scale-up support to help poor countries alleviate poverty, improve rural livelihoods and improve food security and to assist in the implementation of pledges to reinvest in agriculture and food security in poor countries made by the G8++ at L'Aquila in July 2009. It was set up in response to a request from the G20 in Pittsburgh in September 2009. Current donors of GAFSP as of Oct 2010 are:
Australia, Bill& Melinda Gated Foundation, Canada, Ireland, South Korea, Spain and USA .
For more information, please contact our Communication Officer, AfDB - Operations Vice-presidency: +216 7110 2095. Email : m.gaouad@afdb.org
Or visit:
