Poor farmers in Tanzania to get $56 million boost from UN rural development arm

Smallholder farmers in Tanzania will benefit from a $56 million loan injected into the Government’s agricultural sector from the United Nations in an effort to encourage economic growth and reduce poverty.

The supplementary loan to Tanzania from the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will help smallholder farmers by supporting a programme aimed at stimulating the significant growth potential in traditional export crops.

Expanding domestic and regional markets coupled with Tanzania’s relative abundance of arable and range land have provided an opportunity for farmers to profit from growing crops for export, IFAD said.

The loan from IFAD will go towards an initiative helping poor rural women and men living on less than $1 a day to boost their agricultural productivity and incomes. The programme also assists people most vulnerable to food insecurity by giving them access to agricultural knowledge, technologies, marketing systems and infrastructure.

The total cost of the programme is estimated at over $315 million over seven years, with the main sources of financing coming from IFAD, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, Irish Aid, Japan, the European Union, the Government of Tanzania and the beneficiaries themselves.

The loan agreement was signed yesterday in Rome by Lennart Båge, IFAD President and Wilfred Joseph Ngirwa, the Permanent Representative of Tanzania to the United Nations Agencies (Food and Agriculture Organization, IFAD and World Food Programme).

To date IFAD, created to tackle rural poverty, has funded 14 rural development projects in Tanzania for a total of some $269 million.