The Executive Board of the World Bank on 25 April approved two credits for a total of $150 million to improve Mozambique’s agricultural performance.
The loans are intended “to boost the Government of Mozambique’s efforts to improve the performance of commercial agriculture and smallholder farmers, while also improving people’s food and nutrition security”.
One of the loans, for $50 million, will support the government’s First Agriculture Development Policy Operation (AdDPO), described as “the first of three operations designed to promote private sector-led agriculture in order to improve access to food and better nutrition”.
According to the World Bank country director for Mozambique, Laurence Clarke, “agriculture offers Mozambique an immediate opportunity to foster balanced economic and social development in the country even as it expands its mining and gas industries”.
“This new project”, he added, ‘focuses on providing opportunity to Mozambique’s growing ranks of farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs in a way that will generate higher incomes for farmers while also improving nutrition for the country’s rural population.”
The second loan is for $100 million and will support the Integrated Growth Poles Project, which is intended to improve the performance of agricultural companies and smallholders in the Zambezi Valley, in the centre of the country, and in the Nacala Corridor in the north.
The Bank states that the project “will raise employment and agricultural sales and help fund a variety of activities such as upgrading feeder roads, increasing privately executed public investments, and linking small farmers to emerging supply chains”.
The two credits come from the World Bank’s soft loans facility, the International Development Association (IDA).
