UN FUND APPROVES NEARLY $200 MILLION IN GRANTS AND LOANS TO HELP RURAL POOR

UN News Centre
15 September 2007

14 September 2007 – The United Nations International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced that it has approved almost
$200 million in grants and loans to support initiatives to bolster
the living conditions of the rural poor in more than a dozen countries
in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Near East.

In West and Central Africa, IFAD will make $5.7 million in loans and
$15 million in grants available.

Some 28,000 farmers in the Woleu-Ntem province of Gabon will receive
funding to help diversify their incomes through the development and
marketing of new products form such staple crops as bananas, cassava
and peanuts.

In Guinea, a grant will help finance a project to bolster local
governance in rural areas while in Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s
poorest nations, another grant will assist 100,000 rural people build
their communities through rehabilitating infrastructure and bolstering
grassroots organizations.

Lesotho, Uganda, Bangladesh, the Maldives, Pakistan, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Armenia, Morocco and Yemen will also receive IFAD grants
or loans.

Additionally, the fund approved six grants to international centres
conducting agricultural research and development activities in rural
areas in poor nations.

IFAD supports nearly 200 ongoing rural poverty eradication programmes
and projects, worth $6 billion, to reach 82 million rural poor people
worldwide.