East Africa: World Bank Approves US$90 million for Agricultural Productivity Program

Contacts:

In Nairobi: Peter Warutere

(+254 20) 3226444

pwarutere@worldbank.org

In Washington DC: Rachel McColgan-Arnold

(202) 458 5299

rmccolgan@worldbank.org  

Washington DC, June 11, 2009— The World Bank has approved US$90 million to strengthen agricultural productivity and growth in the East African region. The program will benefit Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania with an allocation of US$30 million each.

The East Africa Agricultural Productivity Program was approved by the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today. It will support the three countries to strengthen and scale up regional cooperation in generation of technology, training and dissemination programs for regional priority commodities. These include dairy, cassava, rice and wheat.

“Agricultural technology is fundamental to growth in productivity and will enable agriculture to play a transformative role in Africa’s economic development,” says Karen Mcconnell Brooks, the Bank’s Sector Manager for Agriculture and Rural in the Africa Region. “This program will contribute to the growth, structural change and food security of the three East African countries.”

Agriculture accounts for two-fifths of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in East Africa and it is the primary source of income for more than two-thirds of the population. It is key to poverty reduction and better livelihoods for the people of three countries—which have a combined population of nearly 160 million.

Improved regional agricultural technology systems can deliver benefits to food security in the short run and also boost longer term economic growth. The recent sharp increases in the prices of food, especially cereals and oilseeds, created hardships for consumers but also created opportunities for farmers in the region.

“Advanced technologies are necessary to empower farmers improve their responsiveness to food price shocks through increased access to inputs, including seeds of improved cultivators and improved livestock,” says David Nielson, the Task Team Leader of the Program. “This program will support the three countries to lower barriers of movement of technologies across borders and increase the regional space for inputs markets that are presently constrained by the small size of national markets,” he adds.

The program will support efforts to scale up and develop national research programs into Regional Centers of Excellence that will take a leading role in technology generation, dissemination and training on a regional basis. It is part of the Bank’s regional agricultural strategy to support activities that will be coordinated across three or more countries and generate benefits that spill over country boundaries. It will also strengthen regional integration in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and provide a platform for regional agricultural policy harmonization.

The program will complement the agricultural investment programs that are being implemented in the three countries. These include the US$82 million Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Agribusiness Project that was also approved by the Board today to support Kenya’s small holder farmers to increase farm productivity and to promote agribusiness development. It is also linked to the Kenya Agricultural Productivity and Sustainable Land Management Project financed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to facilitate agricultural producers in three important catchment areas to adopt environmentally sound land management practices.

The Bank is a key partner in agricultural development in East Africa and it also provided emergency intervention for the recent global food prices crisis. In December 2008, it approved an emergency grant US$250 million under its Global Food Crisis Response Program to assist Ethiopians deal with serious food shortfalls, high input prices and the impact of the global financial crisis. It also provided a similar grant of US$5 million to Kenya in April 2009.

For more information about the World Bank in Ethiopia, please visit www.worldbank.org/Ethiopia 

For more information about the World Bank in Kenya, please visit www.worldbank.org/Kenya 

 For more information about the World Bank in Tanzania, please visit www.worldbank.org/Tanzania           

For more information about the World Bank in Africa, please visit www.worldbank.org/Afr