By Francis Ogwo
Plans are underway by the World Bank to commit over $5 billion in investment over the next five years to improve agriculture productivity in Africa.
This according to the global apex bank would help restore degraded landscapes, improve agriculture productivity, and promote livelihoods.
This was made known by the President of the World Bank Group, David Malpass, today, at the One Planet Summit, a high-level meeting co-hosted with France and the United Nations.
At the global summit which focused on addressing climate change and biodiversity loss in the continent of Africa, the President of World Bank said the Group is set to invest over $5 billion over the next five years.
He was of the view that the investment which comes at a very crucial time will help to restore degraded landscapes, improve agriculture productivity, and promote livelihoods as countries recover from COVID-19.
Malpass said: “This investment, which comes at a crucial time, will help improve livelihoods as countries recover from COVID-19 while also dealing with the impact of both biodiversity loss and climate change on their people and economies.”
Also speaking on the development was Moussa Faki Mahamat, who is the Chairperson of the African Union Commission. She said: “Restoring natural ecosystems in the drylands of Africa benefits both people and the planet.”
Note that the $5 billion financing will be targeted towards supporting agriculture, restoring biodiversity, and enhancing community development, food security, landscape restoration, job creation, resilient infrastructure, rural mobility, and access to renewable energy across 11 countries of the Sahel, Lake Chad and Horn of Africa.
Many of these efforts are in line with the Great Green Wall initiative. This move will build on World Bank’s landscape investments in Africa over the past eight years, that reached more than 19 million people and placed 1.6 million hectares under sustainable land management.
However, a World Bank global fund, PROGREEN, dedicated to boosting countries’ efforts to address landscape degradation, will also invest $14.5 million in five Sahelian countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania.
The World Bank Group is the biggest multilateral funder of climate investments in developing countries. In December 2020, the the Group announced an ambitious new target for 35% of its financing to have climate co-benefits, on average, over the next five years.
Created at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, The World Bank along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are both based in Washington, D.C., and work closely with each other.
