The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) inaugurated a new country office in Ouagadougou today. Active in Burkina Faso since 1981, IFAD is strengthening its field presence to better serve rural people, improve their living conditions while working towards sustainable and resilient agricultural development in collaboration with the Government, partners and the agriculture sector as a whole.
"The presence of an IFAD country office in Burkina Faso allows us to be closer to our partners and small-scale farmers. This office will also help to strengthen our cooperation with the Government and improve our real-time alignment with its priorities, such as the urgent need to tackle the food insecurity of internally displaced people. Thanks to this strengthened cooperation, we will also be able to step up our action in crucial areas such as climate change, gender equality, youth employment and overall food and nutrition security," said Guoqi Wu, IFAD's Associate Vice-President in charge of the Corporate Services Department.
The country's economy is highly dependent upon agriculture and nearly 80 per cent of the active population work in the sector. IFAD's investments focus on increasing rural people's productive capacities, improving their market earnings, and building the environmental sustainability and resilience of their economic activities. There are currently four IFAD-funded projects under way in the country, for a total value of nearly US$351 million.
The current project portfolio targets a broad range of agricultural value chains considered a priority for food and nutritional security: maize, sorghum, millet, rice, cowpea, sesame, cassava, orange fleshed sweet potato, nontimber forest products (moringa, baobab, honey), vegetables (tomato, onion, pepper), poultry, fish and pork.
Ann Turinayo, IFAD Representative and Country Director, Burkina Faso, said during her remarks: "IFAD appreciates the Government of Burkina Faso's firm commitment to rural transformation, and particularly the implementation of programmes that enable smallholder men and women producers to earn more money, feed themselves better and access the inputs they need to operate successfully."
Since 1981, IFAD has contributed financing to 17 rural development programmes and projects in the country for a total investment of US$832 million, of which US$394 million was provided by IFAD. These projects and programmes have directly benefited 623,200 rural households in Burkina Faso.
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The four projects currently under way in the country are the Agricultural Value Chains Promotion Project (PAPFA), the Agricultural Value Chains Support Project in the Southwest, Hauts-Bassins, Cascades and Boucle du Mouhoun Regions (PAFA-4R), the Joint Programme for the Sahel in Response to the Challenges of COVID-19, Conflict and Climate Change (SD3C) and the Programme to Strengthen Smallholder Resilience to Climate Change (PSSRC/RESI-2P).
