40m African Farmers To Benefit From AfDB’s $1bn Wheat Fund
About 40 million farmers are to benefit from the $1 billion Wheat Fund by the African Development Bank to boost the production of the commodity on the African continent.
This intervention by the Development bank is to cushion the effect of the Russian -Ukraine’s war on the supply and the price of the commodity.
Russia had three weeks ago invaded Urkraine and several sanctions imposed on the eastern European nation has impacted supply, thereby causing supply shortage of the produce and a spike in the price of food items that are the end products.
Russia and Ukraine account for 23 percent of the global wheat market, worth 206.9 million metric tonnes in 2021, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Speaking on the development,
Akinwumi Adesina, AfDB’s president, said the fund would assist 40 million African farmers utilise climate-resilient technologies and increase their output of heat-tolerant wheat varieties and other crops.
He said the plan is to increase the production of wheat, rice, soybeans, and other crops to feed about 200 million Africans.
“We are going to be really ramping up our efforts to mobilise that money. If there was ever a time that we needed to really drastically raise food production in Africa, for Africa’s food security and to mitigate the impact of this food crisis arising from this war, it is now,” Adesina said.
Adesina noted that wheat imports account for about 90 percent of Africa’s $4 billion trade with Russia and nearly half of the continent’s $4.5 billion trade with Ukraine.
According to the AfDB President, the risks are particularly acute in Africa, where about 283 million people were already going hungry before the onset of the war.
Adesina also revealed that the bank would have a meeting of the continent’s finance and agriculture ministers to discuss how best to finance it.
He added that new methods have already helped Ethiopia raise its wheat production, and it now expects to be self-sufficient in supplying the grain within three years.
“Surplus production could then be exported to countries like Egypt, the world’s top wheat importer,” Adesina said.
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