How AfDB is helping transform Agriculture in Africa – Report

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has deployed $5.5 billion in investments into the agriculture sector over five years up to 2015, the new Development Effectiveness Review on Agriculture, has revealed.

 

According to the review, the bank trained three million people on better farming practices, put 20,000 food marketing and storage into use, constructed four thousand kilometres of feeder roads, offered 150,000 microcredit loans, irrigated and built other water systems on 181,000 hectare of farmland.

 

While commenting on the review, the Director of Quality Assurance and Results of the Department that authored the Review Simon Mizrahi explained that the Review is Mission accomplished.

 

“The Development Effectiveness Review is mission accomplished, as the AfDB sets out an even more ambitious agenda in its Feed Africa strategy to end hunger and extreme poverty by 2025” he said

 

The Review which details the progress and the pitfalls to date in transforming Africa’s agriculture sector, lays out what steps must be taken to catapult Africa into becoming a global agricultural power house in the next decade.

 

It maintains that, agriculture has zoomed to the top of Africa’s policy agenda, with African countries pledging to eradicate hunger and halve post-harvest losses in under a decade. 

 

Some of other most noteworthy operations of the Bank cited in the report during the period include the Africa Food Crisis Response Programme, which fast-tracked relief that raised US$1.0 billion and led to better harvests; New Rice for Africa, which boosted the hardiness, nutrition and yields of rice and improved the livelihoods of almost a quarter of a million subsistence farmers amongst others.

 

To end hunger, the development report stresses the need to invest in agriculture as it remains the only panacea to the problem of hunger and poverty in the continent.

 

“It has become increasingly clear that investing in agriculture is the best way to end hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty in Africa,” the development report states. 

 

“Given that seven out of 10 Africans earn a living from the land, agriculture can create economic growth spread more evenly across society, and extending deeper into rural areas, and helping more women, who make up 70 percent of farmers”, it reads.