AfDB earmarks $ 271 m to back Egypt’s food security, economic resilience

20 / 07 / 2022

By Marwa Nassar - -

The African Development Bank (AfDB) decided to extend a loan of $ 271 million to finance Egypt’s Food Security and Economic Resilience Support Program to support efforts to mitigate the impact of the global shocks on the domestic economy from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and to preserve resilience.

The program includes two major components; Support for the Food Security Response and Build Private Sector and Fiscal Resilience.

The first component seeks to increase national agricultural productivity and mitigate food security risks for people in vulnerable situations. The program will support broad-based growth by increasing agricultural productivity and sustainability by setting additional incentives to encourage local farmers to grow wheat and increasing their share of subsidized fertilizers.

The second component will help enhance Egypt’s private sector and fiscal resilience as a resilient private sector can be instrumental in reducing the economic and social impacts of the exogenous shocks.

Mohamed El Azizi, African Development Bank Director General for North Africa, explained that “This new operation integrates emergency measures as well as structural measures. Its objectives: strengthen food security and improve the resilience of the private sector and public finances”.

“With food security quickly becoming a global challenge, international partnerships are needed to curb the impact of successive global crises, ensuring self-sufficiency and resilience. Egypt’s Food Security Response and Economic Resilience Support Program with the African Development Bank comes on the back of the government policy reforms that have been implemented to enhance agricultural productivity and sustainability, mitigate food security risks on vulnerable populations, enhance private sector resilience, and strengthen the fiscal resilience and transparency”, said Dr. Rania Al-Mashat, Egypt’s Minister for International Cooperation.

The project comes through multi-donor stand-alone budget support for Egypt ($ 97.3 million) from the African Development Bank and other co-financiers, and the African Emergency Food Production Facility with total finance of $ 173.7 million approved by the Board of Directors on May 2022.