Over 43,700 vulnerable rural households in Senegal will benefit from a US$72.4 million programme to bolster food and security and incomes for smallholder crop and livestock farmers in four regions of the country and boost their resilience to climate change, the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development said in a statement on Thursday.
The programme will develop production and marketing of rice, maize, fonio and small ruminants, and will help improve poultry breeding. In addition to these major agricultural value chains, it will support complementary products such as millet, sorghum and bananas, the IFAD statement said.
It will improve hydro-agricultural systems, pastoral infrastructure and markets in Senegal, whose agriculture sector is extremely vulnerable to climate change, and will also provide training to producers' organizations to allow them to provide sustainable services to their members, IFAD said.
The project will also help producers access credit and improve their knowledge of financial services, as well as strengthen the weather index-based insurance programme developed during and earlier phase of the programme, according to the IFAD statement.
Poor rural households who depend on small farms for their food and income are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the new programme will help such households in the Kedougou, Kolda, Matam and Tambacounda regions of Senegal, said the statement.
Though integration with profitable and diversified value chains, the project aims to create permanent and well-paying jobs for rural people living in the target areas and to make sure that at least half of participants are women and half are young people, IFAD said.
The financing of the programme includes a $46.3 million loan and $0.5 million grant from IFAD. It will be cofinanced by an OPEC Fund for International Development grant ($10 million), the Government of Senegal ($9.5 million), the local communities and the beneficiaries themselves ($6.1 million
The programme agreement was signed by correspondence by Gilbert F. Houngbo, President of IFAD and, Senegal's Finance Minister Amadou Ba, IFAD stated.
IFAD has financed 17 rural development programmes and projects in Senegal since 1981, at a total cost of $514.2 million, with an IFAD investment of $269.1 million. These projects and programmes have directly benefited nearly 500,000 rural household, the UN agency said.
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