Despite their country's agricultural potential, 7 million South Sudanese are food insecure. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is trying to turn this situation around over the next six years by funding the Food and Agriculture Delivery Pact to the tune of $46 million.
According to the African Development Bank (AfDB), South Sudan is the third most fragile country in the world and the fifth most vulnerable to climate change. The East African country is heavily dependent on agriculture, which generates 70% of jobs and up to 95% of household income nationwide. However, the potential of this sector is not yet sufficiently exploited.
“Only 4.5% of the land is currently being farmed, and more than 7.1 million people (63.1% of the population) have difficulty accessing sufficient, nutritious food”, laments the financial institution. Faced with this situation, the AfDB is releasing $46 million to implement the Food and Agriculture Delivery Pact presented by the government of Southern Sudan at the Dakar-2 Feed Africa Summit held in Senegal in January 2023.
The programme, which aims to boost food security and self-sufficiency, will enable the large-scale deployment of climate-smart technologies and production systems, the strengthening of priority value chains such as sorghum, rice, sesame and fishery products, and the promotion of digital agricultural and climate advisory solutions. All this will be done with the support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) between September 2024 and December 2030, a period of six years.
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These initiatives will be complemented by “the development of professional, technical and entrepreneurial skills to create more jobs for women and young people”, explains Martin Fregene, Director of Agriculture and Agribusiness at the African Development Bank. A total of 567,155 people in the states of Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Eastern Equatoria, Central Equatoria and Jonglei are targeted. They are mainly producers, processors and entrepreneurs, 50% of whom are women and young people aged between 18 and 35.
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