New partnership to boost agricultural growth in Africa

Last week the International Finance Corporation (IFC), joined forces with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to unlock credit and financing for small-scale farmers and agribusinesses across sub-Saharan Africa. IFC is a member of the World Bank Group, while AGRA is a dynamic partnership working across the African continent to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger. The partnership comes a month after AGRA held an annual retreat in Kigali to streamline the existing innovative financing projects to reach more countries and key stakeholders. The amount of agricultural lending in Africa is very low, one of the reasons hindering farmers’ ability to achieve their full potential, and escaping hunger and poverty. IFC and AGRA will work together in various ways to scale up investors and national commercial banks to make loans available to farmers and agribusinesses. “Our partnership with IFC will harness the strengths of both organizations to scale up innovative programs across the agricultural value chain. We will improve the livelihoods of many more small-scale farmers and be able to do it sooner,” said Namanga Ngongi, AGRA’s President. According to her, the growth of the agricultural sector will strengthen the continent’s food security, as well as create employment and raise living standards for millions of smallholder African farmers. “The challenges to growing Africa’s agribusiness are great. But so are the opportunities. IFC is committed to helping Africa capitalize on these opportunities by playing a catalytic role of bringing a wide range of partners together to deliver practical market based solutions. Our alliance with AGRA is a very important step in this direction,” said Lars Thunell, Executive Vice President and CEO of IFC. AGRA has made a $12 million investment by providing financing to the African Seed Investment Fund (ASIF) while IFC’s new investments totaled $16.2 billion in fiscal 2008, a 34 percent increase over the previous year. Ends