Rural poor in Ghana and Nicaragua to benefit from UN-funded projects

Thousands of households in Ghana and Nicaragua are set to benefit from projects aimed at building small businesses and enhancing productivity that are funded by the United Nations agency that works to improve the lives of the rural poor.

A $31.5 million loan from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will help extend the Rural Enterprises Project, which has for the past 16 years provided Ghana’s rural poor with quality and easily accessible services such as affordable credit and cost-effective technology to improve productivity.

The new loan will finance the third phase of this project that will focus on rural women and youth in all rural areas of Ghana.

According to IFAD, Ghana was the first African country to have almost halved the proportion of people living in extreme poverty. However, despite the overall decline in the incidence of poverty in the country, the scourge still has a firm grip on rural areas, particularly in the north.

The agency has invested a total of over $677 million since 1980 to help reduce rural poverty in Ghana, benefiting nearly 1.8 million households.

Meanwhile, IFAD also signed a new $15 million loan agreement for a poverty reduction programme in Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. The five-year programme, know as NICARIBE, which seeks to create new opportunities for women, young people and indigenous communities in the Autonomous Regions of the Northern and South Atlantic departments.

“This important programme will work with over 100 communities on the Caribbean coast, allowing poor rural people living in these areas to improve productivity, access new markets, make more money and create better opportunities for their children,” said Josefina Stubbs, director of IFAD’s division for Latin America and the Caribbean.

With climate change and sustainable natural resource management becoming a national priority, the project will also support new approaches for environmental protection in the region and will strengthen local institutions and empower local governments with an economic development fund.

Since 1980 IFAD has supported eight rural poverty reduction projects in the Central American nation with over $100 million in funding.