The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank has approved a 11.7 million dollar budgetary allocation to the African Fertilizer Financing Mechanism, AFFM, for its 2023 operations.
The approval increases the fund allotted to the programme to a total of 16.4 million dollars with 4.7 million dollars out of the money carried over from the previous year.
The Board also validated the AFFM’s activities for the year, which include strengthening the fertilizer sector through access to finance, supporting the development of sustainable policy reforms to improve fertilizer production, trade and use, and facilitating of access to inputs and technical assistance for smallholder farmers.
AFFM plans to continue implementing three commercial credit guarantee projects amounting to eight point three million dollars to recipient countries, including Zimbabwe (4.3million dollars), Côte d’Ivoire (2 million dollars), and Ghana (2 million dollars).
For 2023, it plans to implement trade credit guarantee schemes of 9.7 million dollars in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, and Kenya.
Three more new projects can be launched in Senegal, Zambia, and Ghana if the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, follows through on its 15-million-dollar commitment to the AFFM.
The implementation of the projects is in line with the second pillar of the Bank’s African Emergency Food Production Facility, which was launched to avert a looming food crisis in Africa following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In addition, AFFM will actively work with African countries and other key stakeholders to develop the national food and agriculture pacts that the continent’s leaders presented at the Feed Africa Summit in Dakar in January 2023.
A statement on the approval said AFFM would facilitate smallholder farmers’ access to inputs and extension services through credit guarantee projects and capacity building for farmers and input distributors.
SOURCE: GNA
