Stories Behind IFAD’s Focus on Africa
By Kwame Buist
ROME (IDN) – In its recently released Annual Report 2017, the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – a specialised agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries – promises to leverage core resources of 1.2 billion dollars to fund a programme of loans and grants totalling 3.5 billion dollars over the 2019-2021 period.
Ninety percent of these core resources will be allocated to low-income and lower-middle-income countries, with about 45 percent being channelled to sub-Saharan Africa, and 50 percent to Africa as a whole.…