UN agency lends $15.5 million to help thousands of Tunisia’s rural poor
Thousands of rural households in northern Tunisia will be helped by a new $15.5 million loan from the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) that is part of a larger project aimed at improving the livelihoods of poor farmers and wage-workers.
Thousands of rural households in northern Tunisia will be helped by a new $15.5 million loan from the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) that is part of a larger project aimed at improving the livelihoods of poor farmers and wage-workers.
The loan agreement was signed today by the President of IFAD, Lennart Båge and Tunisia’s Ambassador to Italy, Habib Mansour, at IFAD headquarters in Rome and the money will be used for the second phase of a rural development project in Tunisia’s Governate of Siliana.
“This project builds upon work begun during the first phase and will continue to improve the living conditions of Tunisia’s rural poor by ensuring their participation in the development process,” said Rasha Omar, IFAD’s Country Programme Manager for Tunisia.
In addition to the IFAD loan, the $38.9 million dollar development project, will be funded by the Government of Tunisia and a grant from the Global Environment Facility, an independent financial organization that provides grants to developing countries for projects that benefit the global environment.
IFAD said the project would benefit more than 15,000 rural households by supporting the development of small and medium-sized agricultural businesses as well as by providing vocational training and other development support.
The project will also support the creation of a system to monitor sustainable land management and oversee soil and water conservation because Siliana’s mountainous terrain is particularly vulnerable to erosion, while water supply is limited.
With this loan, IFAD said it would have financed nine programmes and projects for a total of $281.5 million dollars in Tunisia.
The Rome-based agency is dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries and, through low-interest loans and grants, it develops and finances projects that enable rural poor to overcome poverty themselves. There are almost 200 ongoing IFAD-supported rural poverty eradication programmes and projects, totalling about $6.5 billion, with IFAD having invested about $3 billion in these initiatives.