The World Bank Board of Executive Directors has approved two International Development Association, IDA, credits totalling $300 million (about N47.4 billion) to support Nigeria's efforts to expand its agricultural sector.
The support has specific targets of achieving food security and improved nutrition of the rural poor in the country.
According to a statement by the World Bank Office in Nigeria yesterday, the IDA credit of $100 million will fund the Nigeria Agriculture Sector Development Policy Operation, the first of two projects that will support the ongoing government's Agricultural Transformation Agenda.
The operation of the first project will include efforts to strengthen policies and capacity to raise yields, promote market access among farmers, and improve overall management of the country's rapidly expanding agriculture industry.
The second IDA credit of $200 million will fund the Third National Fadama Development Project (Fadama III). These funds will support smallholder farmers, organised in clusters in six states, activities designed to increase their production of food staples, including cassava, rice, sorghum, and processing them for delivery. The funds will also link the farmers to better-organised markets and to small and large-scale food processors.
Speaking on the importance of agricultural sector to socio-economic development of the country, World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly, said "Nigeria has an enormous opportunity to promote a vibrant, competitive and technologypropelled agricultural sector, which today employs 70 per cent of the population".
Marie-Nelly said: "The new project focuses on providing opportunity to Nigeria's growing ranks of agribusiness entrepreneurs in a way that will generate higher incomes for farmers while also enhancing expansion in the industrial sector, ensuring food security and enhancing foreign exchange earnings."
In his remarks on the second project to which $200 million has been approved, World Bank Director of Sustainable Development for the African Region, Jamal Saghir, also described the Fadama Development Project as an innovative approach to leverage private sector investments and to establish business linkages between large investors and smallholder farmers. He projected that the fund would assist the Nigerian Government in its efforts to expand employment, raise household incomes and enhance skills and capacity.
The IDA, which is the private sector lending arm of the Breton Woods Institution, is one of the largest sources of assistance for the world's 82 poorest countries, 40 of which are in Africa.
Resources from IDA bring positive change for 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day. Since its establishment in 1960, IDA has supported development work in 108 countries with its annual commitments increasing steadily over the past years. In the past three years, IDA's commitments averaged about $15 billion, with about 50 per cent of commitments going to Africa.
National Mirror