The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org) approved a grant of $8.1 million to South Sudan to fund its Emergency Food Production Programme.
Allocated through the Transition Support Facility (https://bit.ly/3uUoC2o), the grant constitutes additional financing to the ongoing Agricultural Markets, Value Addition and Trade Development Project (AMVAT). AMVAT seeks to contribute to reduced food insecurity, poverty reduction, economic growth and building of community and household resilience and social cohesion.
Exacerbated by climate hazards, the threat of a food crisis has long loomed over South Sudan, which has not been food self-sufficient since 2009 Some 8.9 million people, more than 70% of the population, including 4.6 million children, received humanitarian aid in 2022. This is 600,000 more people than in 2021, according to the World Food Programme. But the threat of a food crisis has never been greater, due to the impact of the war in Ukraine.
This Emergency Food Production Programme targets an additional 600,000 of the most vulnerable groups in five states where recent severe flooding has affected hundreds of thousands of households and resulted in heavy crop and livestock losses: Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile, Western Bahr el Ghazal, Eastern Equatoria and Western Equatoria. Those who have received food aid in recent years – half of them are women – will get priority.
Nnenna Nwabufo, the Bank’s Director General for East Africa, said, “it is a continuation of the of the performing AMVAT project, but with a focus on the emergency food crisis and disruption of supply of critical inputs for food production in South Sudan”