The African Development Bank (AfDB) has agreed to an African Fertilizer Development Financing Mechanism (AFFM) participation in a USD 4 million partial trade credit guarantee taken alongside OCP Africa, a subsidiary of the Moroccan group OCP. This project will reduce potential risks along the agricultural value chain and improve access to quality inputs, in particular fertilizers, in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, says the AfDB on its website. .

The project, which covers a period of three years (2020-2023) will help 430,000 smallholder farmers, including 104,000 women, and will facilitate their access to quality agricultural inputs at affordable prices as well as training in good farming practices, reports MAP. The project will build on OCP Africa's "Agribooster" initiative, which is based on an inclusive approach to facilitate farmers' access to quality inputs, training, credit and the establishment business linkages, to increase yields and incomes while improving livelihoods.

This operation is expected to boost productivity and contribute to a 35% increase in rice and maize yields in Ghana and 30% in rice yields in Côte d'Ivoire. With this in mind, OCP Africa and AFFM will each provide two million dollars in trade credit guarantees.

For the first vice-president of OCP Africa for West Africa, Lahcen Ennahli, "this partnership with the AfDB will make it possible to intensify and extend the activities implemented within the framework of the Agribooster initiative. We believe that this initiative will serve as a model to further incentivize other private sector and development partners to enter into similar risk-sharing agreements, which will have a positive multiplier effect on farmers, especially in the current context of the Covid pandemic. -19, which poses a serious threat to their prosperity as well as to food security, agricultural inputs and know-how".

"The AfDB is delighted to partner with OCP Africa in order to achieve the objective of increasing agricultural productivity included in the Bank's strategy, + Feed Africa +", said Martin Fregene, Director in in charge of agriculture and agro-industry at the AfDB.