Additional Financing to Sierra Leone Food Systems Resilience Program, Phase 2

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Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP) Multi-Phase Programmatic Approach (MPA) was approved by the World Bank Board of Directors on November 18th, 2021, for a total of US$641 million, including financing from the Global Risk Financing Facility (GRiF), the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and co-financing from the Kingdom of the Netherlands channeled through the Food Systems 2030 trust fund. Phase I includes Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Togo, along with three regional organizations - the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research (CORAF) and the Permanent Interstate Committee for drought control in the Sahel (CILSS). The Program Development Objective (PrDO) is to increase preparedness against food insecurity and improve the resilience of food systems in participating countries. All Phase I countries and organizations are effective and making progress against their targets, and towards the overall achievement of the PrDO. The Program has the following three technical components: i) Component 1, Digital Advisory Services for Agriculture and Food Crisis Prevention and Management, has the objective to upgrade regional food crisis prevention and management systems and enhance food system stakeholder’s access and use of agro-hydrometeorological information services: ii) Component 2, Sustainability and Adaptive Capacity of the Food System’s Productive Base, aims to strengthen national and regional agricultural research systems as well as the implementation of Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) in selected communities. The third component of the program, Regional Food Market Integration and Trade, is supposed to elevate intra-regional food trade and increase value creation in selected value chains. In addition to the three technical components, the program includes (iv) a Contingency Emergency Response Component (CERC) as Component 4; and (v) Component 5 Project Management. Activities under each component have been launched.On July 29, 2022, US$315 million of IDA was approved by the World Bank Board of Directors for a second phase of the FSRP MPA. The total approved amount includes national and regional IDA to Sierra Leone (US$60 million), Chad (US$105 million) and Ghana (US$150 million), bringing the total MPA envelope to US$716 million (including resources not approved in the original envelope). The Project Development Objective (PDO) for FSRP- Sierra Leone (FSRP-SL) is to increase preparedness against food insecurity and improve the resilience of food systems in Sierra Leone. The Project was signed on August 22, 2022 with an effectiveness deadline of November 19. Given the urgency of the Additional Financing (AF), the team is working to achieve effectiveness ahead of this deadline. Effectiveness is expected to be achieved by November 7, 2022. There are no results to-date but a first Implementation Status and Results Report (ISR) was approved on October 21, 2022, and all of the ratings were Satisfactory. The proposed AF will build on the design of on-going FSRP Phase II MPA. Targeting under the AF will focus on scaling-up immediate and medium-term activities falling within the FSRP-SL objectives, components, and geographical areas leveraging FSRP-SL’s implementation modalities. This will be achieved by (i) replenishing the US$25 million that was reallocated from Component 2 to emergency response activities when activating the CERC; and (ii) scaling-up investments under Components 2 and 3 in infrastructure and technologies to support improved production for the next cropping season. New targets will be added at PDO level, and new indicators will be added for activities under Components 2, 3 and 4. FSRP-SL is designed to address challenges to food system resilience and food security in Sierra Leone, including: (i) low growth of food system productivity compared to population growth; (ii) falling per capita food availability; (iii) limited access to improved technologies, modern inputs, and advisory services; (iii) weak access to markets due to inadequate post-harvest, and market infrastructure; and (iv) limited processing capacity and value-added activities. FSRP-SL thus provides a strong foundation on which to address several production and marketing related aspects of the unfolding food and nutrition security crisis facing Sierra Leone while also contributing to longer-term resilience of crisis-affected households and communities. The SL FSRP will be implemented in all districts of Sierra Leone and focused on the three priority value chains: rice, cassava, and livestock. These value chains were selected because of their potential for regional food and nutrition security, and the natural comparative advantage that Sierra Leone has in developing and promoting them. For the respective value chains, the following ten districts will be targeted: (i) Rice – Bonthe, Port Loko, Tonkolili, Bo, Kenema and Kambia; (ii) Cassava – Bonthe, Bo, Moyamba, Tonkolili and Pujehun; and (iii) Livestock – Bo, Moyamba, Koinadugu, Falaba. The selection criteria for the areas of intervention were based on (i) food insecurity; (ii) the agro-sylvo-pastoral potential; (iii) national and regional impact; and (iv ) complementarity with past/ongoing projects. While the project has not yet had sufficient time to generate substantial lessons learned, the FSRP benefits from an accompanying trust fund (the Food Systems Resilience Facility, FSRF, P172941) that produces analytical work to support the continued learning within the MPA. Within this framework, knowledge has been generated related to risk management, conflict and crisis, trade and markets and impact evaluation methodologies, all of which is being systematically streamlined into Phase I and Phase 2 of the MPA.