President Xi Jinping of the People's Republic of China announced a renewed US$ 10 million contribution to the China-IFAD South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) Facility last week. This funding demonstrates China's ongoing commitment to supporting SSTC within the UN system, with a particular focus on agricultural development in the Global South.
The China-SSTC Facility was established in 2018 with a US$10 million initial contribution from China. The Facility has effectively leveraged knowledge, technologies, and resources from the Global South to accelerate rural poverty alleviation, enhance productivity, and drive rural transformation.
"China's generous contribution to this facility is a powerful example of how developing countries can work together to share knowledge, resources, and expertise to accelerate rural poverty alleviation and empower small-scale farmers," said Alvaro Lario, President, IFAD. "It is a strong vote of confidence in IFAD's work and speaks to a strong and evolving partnership focused on fostering thriving, productive rural communities everywhere," he added.
STARLIT project (Strengthening Agricultural Resilience through Learning and Innovation) an IFAD-China SSTC Facility funded initiative in the Kayonza district in Rwanda, providing solar-powered irrigation systems to smallholder farmers.
As of June 2024, the Facility has supported 20 SSTC projects across 38 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean, directly benefiting over 44,000 people and indirectly impacting more than 70,000.
As the first facility dedicated to SSTC within IFAD, with the new funding, the China-IFAD SSTC Facility will continue to lead efforts in promoting SSTC by fostering cooperation in key areas such as knowledge exchange, policy engagement, technical cooperation, investment, and trade promotion through smart and impactful grants, to improve the rural livelihoods and transforming the agri-food systems in the Global South, in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly goals 1 and 2, which aim to eliminate poverty and hunger by 2030.
