African Development Bank (AFDB) is partnering with Africa Fertiliser Financing Mechanism (AFFM) in a $4 million partial trade credit guarantee with OCP Africa, a subsidiary of the OCP Group, to increase fertiliser use and boost food production in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. The project will reduce potential risks along the agricultural value chain, and improve access to quality inputs, including fertilizers in both countries. The three-year project (2020-2023) will support 430,000 smallholder farmers, including 104,000 women, in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and facilitate their access to quality and affordable agricultural inputs, as well as provide training in good agricultural practices. The project will build on OCP Africa’s Agribooster, an initiative that relies on an inclusive approach to provide farmers access to quality inputs, training, finance and market linkages for increased yields, incomes and livelihoods.
The Africa Fertilizer Financing Mechanism (AFFM), was established by the 2006 Abuja Declaration. Through this Declaration, African Union (AU) member states committed to an initiative to improve agricultural productivity by providing financing required to boost fertilizer use in Africa to achieve the target of 50 kg of nutrients per hectare. The AFFM is managed by the AFDB to accelerate agriculture development within the context of the Africa Food Security Vision, the Sustainable Development Goals and the AU’s Agenda 2063. The AFDB-funded project is in line with the national development programmes of the two countries: it will support the implementation of the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ programme in Ghana as well as the national rice strategy in Cote d’Ivoire. Activities are expected to boost productivity and help increase rice and maize yields by 35% in Ghana and rice yields by 30% in Côte d’Ivoire. In light of these expected outcomes, OCP Africa and the AFFM will each contribute US$2 million in trade credit guarantees.
“The partnership with the African Development Bank will scale up and expand activities implemented under the Agribooster Initiative. We believe at OCP Africa that this initiative will serve as a model to further incentivise other private and development partners to enter into similar risk-sharing agreements that will have a positive multiplying effect on farmers, especially in the current context of COVID-19, which poses a serious threat to their welfare as well as to food security, inputs and agricultural know-how,” Lahcen Ennahli, OCP Africa’s Senior Vice President for West Africa, commented. “The African Development Bank is pleased to partner with OCP Africa to achieve the increased agricultural productivity objective of the bank’s ‘Feed Africa’ strategy. The project will contribute to the bank’s efforts to increase smallholder farmers’ access to modern farming inputs in order to increase productivity and promote agriculture as a profitable and sustainable business in Africa,” said Martin Fregene, Director of Agriculture and Agro-industry at the AFDB.
