JEDDAH: THE International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Islamic Development Bank Group (IDB) signed a $1.5 billion framework co-financing agreement that will strengthen their 30-year collaboration in supporting the world’s poorest people in member countries.
The agreement, which was signed during a meeting between IDB President Ahmad Mohamed Ali and Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of IFAD, comes at a critical moment when the international community has recognized that agricultural development is fundamental to feeding the world’s population. Today, sustained investment in agriculture — especially smallholder agriculture — is acknowledged as the key to food security.
Using their own resources, IFAD and IDB will jointly finance priority projects in most of their common member countries under their respective three-year lending programs for 2010-2012. The two institutions hope that this co-financing arrangement will attract additional funding from other development partners for joint interventions.
With their shared objectives in the field of agriculture and rural development, the two institutions will focus their efforts on increasing productivity, yields, processing capacities and access to markets. Microfinance, combined with capacity-building and technology transfer, will enable hundreds of thousands of project beneficiaries to undertake a multitude of micro enterprises and income-generating activities. IFAD and IDB are committed to working together to improve rural infrastructure, promoting local economic development and increasing food security.
