South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Benjamin Takpiny
The African Development Bank’s Vice President for Regional Development, Integration and Program Delivery, Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade has promised that they will continue supporting the government of South Sudan on agriculture production.
Akin-Olugbade who is in South Sudan for an official visit from 5-7 February 2024 told journalists on Wednesday that they will continue to support the government in implementing food projects, food production, food sovereignty, and agriculture compact.
She said that they will provide more than 60 million U.S. dollars, including co-financing this year to the government.
“This is to help the government really increase the production of rice, sorghum, in sesame, and this is a big project which will go towards enhancing food security in the country. But we are also, of course, having that focus also on those areas where we can maybe, sometimes maybe not with a lot of resources, but have also this impact of really solving specific challenges and unleashing the potential in a region,” Olugbade said.
“As you know, the bank has been in the country since 2012, and we’ve been operating and already providing support to the government in areas that the government deems as priority areas, at the moment the priority that the government has given us is really to help develop agriculture value chain with a view to really contributing to economic diversification and also building resilience. So agriculture and food security is one of the important areas that currently represent about 40% of all that we are doing in South Sudan,” she added.
Olugbade said that they have a number of operations that are being implemented on equipping skills and developing human capacity for the youth of South Sudan in agriculture and food security.
“We had an opportunity to discuss with the authorities how some of these projects are being implemented and more importantly, maybe additional support that may be required. So from a strategic point of view, the authorities have really asked us to continue to do what we are already doing well, but also to consider maybe increasing our support in terms of transport infrastructure but also energy,” she said.
Olugbade assured the leaders she met of the strong support from their donors who have replenished the African Development Fund Concessional Window to historical levels in 2022.
She disclosed that the support that they will provide to South Sudan is going to increase by about 60% relative to what they have done so far.
“We will focus again on agriculture but also on water and sanitation and also again on youth and women support,” Olugbade said.
She said that the opportunity she had to visit the refugee camp was insightful and also extremely emotional for her delegation.
