JOHANNESBURG - The African Development Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation have agreed to boost joint efforts to end hunger and malnutrition and increase prosperity throughout Africa through agriculture sector investments.
The AfDB and the FAO, a specialized UN agency that leads global efforts to defeat hunger, committed to raise up to US$100 million over five years in a new strategic alliance to enhance the quality and impact of investment in food security, nutrition, social protection, agriculture, forestry, fisheries and rural development.
The Bank's president Akinwumi Adesina and FAO director-general José Graziano da Silva signed the agreement.
“Leveraging investments in agriculture, including from the private sector, is key to lifting millions of people from hunger and poverty in Africa and to ensuring that enough food is produced and that enough rural jobs are created for the continent’s growing population,” said da Silva.
Adesina said the signing of the supplementary agreement signalled the two institutions' commitment to accelerate the delivery of high quality programs and increased investment for public-private-partnerships in Africa’s agriculture sector.
"This will help us achieve the vision of making agriculture a business, as enshrined in the Bank’s Feed Africa strategy," Adesina added.
The Feed Africa strategy, launched in 2015, targets to invest US$24 billion into African agriculture over a ten-year period to improve agricultural policies, markets, infrastructure and institutions to ensure that agricultural value chains are well developed and improved technologies are made available to reach several million farmers.