The African Development Bank Board (AfDB) of Directors approved a loan of USD 271 million to finance Egypt’s Food Security and Economic Resilience Support Program to support efforts to mitigate the impact of the global shocks on the domestic economy from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and to preserve resilience.
The program includes two major components: Support for the Food Security Response and Build Private Sector and Fiscal Resilience.
The first component seeks to increase national agricultural productivity and mitigate food security risks for people in vulnerable situations. The program will support broad-based growth by increasing agricultural productivity and sustainability by setting additional incentives to encourage local farmers to grow wheat and increasing their share of subsidized fertilizers.
The second component will help enhance Egypt’s private sector and fiscal resilience as a resilient private sector can be instrumental in reducing the economic and social impacts of the exogenous shocks.
Mohamed El Azizi, African Development Bank Director General for North Africa, explains. “This new operation integrates emergency measures as well as structural measures. Its objectives: strengthen food security and improve the resilience of the private sector and public finances”.
The project comes through multi-donor stand-alone budget support for Egypt (USD 97.3 million) from the African Development Bank and other co-financiers, and the African Emergency Food Production Facility with total finance of USD 173.7 million approved by the Board of Directors in May 2022.
Egypt is a founding member of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB). Lending operations began in 1974, and since then, the Bank Group has financed operations in infrastructure development (transport, power, water supply, and sanitation), agriculture, communications, finance, industry, and social sectors as well as economic and institutional reforms and capacity building.
Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, ُEgyptian Minister of International Cooperation, said that the development financing approved by the African Development Bank(AfDB) for Egypt to support the budget comes within the framework of the government’s efforts to enhance efforts to combat the challenges facing development in the current period as a result of global developments, and their related impact on food security
Pointing out that the Council The management of the African Development Bank(AfDB) , in its meeting regarding the financing that will be provided to Egypt, praised the government’s efforts to achieve food security based on the economic gains and reforms adopted by the political leadership since 2016, which enhanced the resilience and resilience of the Egyptian economy in the face of external shocks.
More than $1 billion for an emergency food production plan
On the other hand, The African Development Bank Group’s Board of Directors has approved 24, fast-track programs to help Africa mitigate rising food prices and inflation caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, climate change, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
The first round of approvals is part of the Bank’s $1.5 billion African Emergency Food Production Facility, established in May to boost food security, nutrition, and resilience across the continent.
The facility will provide 20 million African smallholder farmers with certified seeds and increased access to agricultural fertilizers. It will also support governance and policy reform, which is expected to encourage greater investment in Africa’s agricultural sector. The African Emergency Food Production Facility will enable African farmers to produce 38 million additional tons of food over the next two years. This is food worth an estimated $12 billion.
As of 15 July, the Bank Group’s Board of Directors had approved a total of $1.13 billion in mixed financing for Emergency Facility programs targeting 24 countries: eight countries in West Africa; five in East Africa; six in Southern Africa; four in Central Africa and one in North Africa.
The program will build on the success of the Bank’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) platform. Launched in 2019, TAAT delivered heat-tolerant wheat seed varieties to 1.8 million farmers in seven countries. It also increased wheat production by 2.7 million tons, valued at $840 million.
