Ethiopia has received grant assistance from the African Development Bank Group worth $84.3 million to boost wheat production and raise farmer incomes.
The grant agreement for Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Wheat Value Chain Development Project (CREW) was signed on August 2, 2023, by Finance Minister Ahmed Shide and Abdul Kamara, Deputy Director General for East Africa of the African Development Bank Group.
The donation consists of $54 million from the African Development Fund, the Bank Group’s concessional lending window for low-income nations, $20 million from the Netherlands government, $10 million from the agriculture company OCP Africa, and $300,000 from the Global Center on Adaptation.
The initiative will get $10 million in complementary funding from the government of Ethiopia. The project consists of three parts: Project Coordination and Management; Market Infrastructure, Linkages, and Agri-Finance; and Climate Smart Wheat Productivity and Production.
Ethiopia and numerous other nations on the continent have received assistance from the African Development Bank Group to increase agricultural productivity as part of its flagship Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) initiative.
CREW was created to scale up and maintain the positive outcomes of TAAT. The plan will be implemented over a five-year period and supports Ethiopia’s ambitions to increase wheat self-sufficiency. A total of 500,000 small farmer households will profit from the programme.
Kamara made the following statements at the signing ceremony in Addis Abeba: “The CREW Project will ensure that farmers in Ethiopia can access agricultural inputs to raise local production of wheat such that supply disruptions resulting from the Russia—Ukraine crisis do not worsen the food security situation already made precarious by Covid-19, climate change and rising cost of living. It also seeks to sustain Ethiopia’s exemplary strides in attaining wheat self-sufficiency and export orientation, a model that other African countries should emulate.”
He noted that “The signing of this grant demonstrates the Bank’s unwavering commitment to supporting Ethiopia and its people, and further reaffirms the partnership between the Bank and the government towards achieving Ethiopia’s vision of becoming a lower middle-income country by 2025.”
H.E. Ahmed Shide, the minister of finance, praised the bank’s assistance on his behalf and emphasized that the project will help the government’s measures to increase wheat self-sufficiency.
After South Africa, Ethiopia produces the second-most wheat in sub-Saharan Africa. By using tried-and-true techniques and novel ideas like TAAT, the nation hopes to produce an additional 4.2 million tonnes of irrigated wheat by 2025 or 2026, becoming self-sufficient in the grain and a net exporter.
With this funding, the Bank has now committed $1.23 billion to Ethiopia, which covers the crucial areas of basic services, electricity, transport, water supply and sanitation, agriculture, and the private sector.