Hundreds of thousands of small farmers from Nigeria and Tanzania will benefit from agreement agreements signed between the African Development Bank (AfDB.org) and the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP).
The signing of the agreements, which took place during AGRF 2019 in Accra, Ghana, will implement $ 5.4 million trade credit guarantees to support fertilizer value chains in both countries.
“We are just thrilled to be getting together with our partners in order to expand the efforts to make sure that we are financing the development of manufacturing and blending of fertilizer,” celebrates Jennifer Blanke, African Development Bank Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development.
The grants are designed by the Bank’s Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism (AFFM) to provide sustainable financing solutions to boost the fertilizer value chain in Africa.
For the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership CEO Jason Scarpone, the agreements will benefit manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and farmers. “Few succeed in doing it. This project will be successful,” told.
Scheduled for implementation over a two-year period, the projects will lead to the enhancement of fertilizer value chains in the two countries and will target 10 importers, 5 blenders/manufacturers, and 37 hub agro-dealers as direct beneficiaries, 520 retail agro-dealers as indirect beneficiaries and 700,000 smallholder farmers as final beneficiaries.
By supporting the fertilizer value chain in the two countries, the projects will go a long way to making fertilizer available to more farmers, a key objective of the Bank’s Feed Africa Strategy.
“We have expected results that are realistic. We are here to make sure this happens,” said AFFM Coordinator Marie Claire Kalihangabo.