Media Contacts In Washington: Rachel McColgan-Arnold (202) 458 5299 rmccolgan@worldbank.org WASHINGTON, August 14, 2008 –A US$7 million grant was approved today by the World Bank to finance activities to mitigate the impact of rising food prices in the Central African Republic as a result of rising global food prices. In a country where two-thirds of the population lives below the poverty line, and where food prices have risen by an average of 25 percent in the first third of this year alone, this project will provide critical assistance to alleviate some of the pressure from the escalation of food prices. The Food Response Project has two main components, each of $3.25 million. The first will support the Government’s strategy to maintain and enhance food security by increasing food access for primary and pre-school students through school feeding programs. The second component will enhance rural producers’ access to agricultural technology and advice in order to support production. Working in partnership with the World Food Program’s (WFP) Support for Education for All and Health program, the school feeding program will provide meals to about 150,000 kindergarten and primary school students in one year in six targeted jurisdictions and one trial jurisdiction, selected based on the prevalence of food insecurity. Renato Nardello, the project’s Team Leader, highlighted the projected outcomes: “We expect to see an immediate improvement in the school performance and attendance rate of those students, in the targeted schools, who will be receiving two meals daily. The project has deliberately focused on those public schools with low enrollment and attendance rates and those in rural areas. ” A variety of interventions are planned under component two, including providing improved planting material, small animals and tools, organizing technical training to bolster productivity on a sustainable basis and improving the marketing value of production by ensuring that once the harvest is not lost once reaped. Mr. Nardello added that “the fruits of this project will mainly be seen in the 2009 and 2010, when we expect 20,000 and 50,000 producers to receive better seeds and tools. In a country where more than 60 percent of the population lives in rural areas and relies on agriculture as the main source of livelihood, this will be a significant boost to the agriculture sector and will make crops easier to grow for the producer and more available in the marketplace for the consumer.” As to the project’s sustainability, he added, that “Our main objective, clearly, is to respond to the crisis and to mitigate its immediate negative effects. This is particularly important n a fragile state context and our urgent focus must be to address and to halt the slide into a deeper food security crisis, which could destabilize the political and economic recovery which is underway. The project, however, does have in place a capacity building program to ensure that these short-term efforts yield long-term sustainability and that NGOs and other agencies have the tools to build on these efforts.” Building on lessons learned, the need to ensure the project is kept simple and realistic has been a key consideration in the design of the project and identification of implementing partners. “We are partnering with those organizations and agencies, such as WFP and agencies identified with the Government which have demonstrated their ability and commitment to bring this project to fruition – we all want to see this move swiftly and effectively to address the crisis”, said Mary Barton-Dock, the Bank’s Country Director for the CAR, adding that, “This emergency support complements longer-term agriculture related investments.” The project is funded through the Global Food Crisis Response Program (GFRP) approved less than three months ago, which provides $1.2 billion of rapid financing facility to address immediate needs arising from the food crisis, and which includes $200 million in grants from IBRD surplus targeted at the vulnerable in IDA countries with priority to the most fragile states. To date, more than US$100 million has been committed globally out of the Global Food Crisis Response Program. The GFRP is one facet of the World Bank’s New Deal on Global Food Policy, endorsed by 150 countries, and embraces short, medium and long-term responses: including safety nets such as school feeding, food for work, and conditional cash transfers; increased agricultural production; a better understanding of the impact of bio-fuels; and action on the trade front to reduce distorting subsidies and trade barriers.
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