Burkina Faso Agricultural Transformation Project

pipeline

The project is designed with four components: (i) Improving agricultural productivity and resilience to climate change, (ii) Improving storage, agro-processing and access to Markets, (iii) Promoting Access to Finance and private sector investment, and (iv) Institutional Strengthening and Project Coordination. . COMPONENT 1: IMPROVING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY AND RESILIENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE (INDICATIVE FINANCING US$150 MILLION) The objective of this component is to increase crop productivity, strengthen farmers resilience to climatic shocks, and diversify crop production in response to effective market demand. . The component will focus on promotion and delivery of technologies and services that enhance resilience. Activities to be financed under this component include (i) strengthening of existing input (seeds, fertilizers) supply systems for improved availability and timely access to high quality inputs. (ii) strengthening the delivery of advisory services (including support to capacity strengthening and outreach to farmers); and (iii) improving access to appropriate mechanization. The project will support irrigation scheme and lowland development with special focus on integrated soil fertility, organizational support regarding water management, including land tenure to ensure rights to cultivate for farmers benefiting of irrigated and low land allocation under the project. The project will support and finance demand-driven applied agronomic research and strengthen advisory services to selected priority value-chains. COMPONENT 2: IMPROVING STORAGE, AGRO-PROCESSING AND ACCESS TO MARKETS (INDICATIVE FINANCING US$70 MILLION) The objective of this component is to improve producers and actors along the value chains connection to domestic and export markets, as a way to generate jobs and economic opportunities for youths and women. The component would support (i) the construction/rehabilitation of marketing infrastructures (including aggregation/storage facilities and drying areas) to facilitate market access, including investments needed for postharvest management to reduce food waste and loss and (ii) development of quality norms and standards, technical support, support to market knowledge and capacity-building for structures in charge of sanitary and phyto-sanitary control. . COMPONENT 3: PROMOTING ACCESS TO FINANCE AND PRIVATE SECTOR INVESTMENT (INDICATIVE FINANCING US$55 MILLION) The objective of this component is to enhance access to finance for agri-entrepreneurs and farmers across production, processing, and marketing stages by improving financial education, supporting financial institutions in designing customized financial products, and developing adequate mechanisms to de-risk investments. . The component will fund a Matching Grants (MGs) mechanism to provide partial support to agriculture and agri-business operators to finance their investment Sub-Projects (SPs). . The project will assist value chain operators to (i) identify potential investment activities, and prepare viable business plans to secure access to funding and (ii) identifying and mobilizing tools, technique and partners to de-risk investment across the supply chain segments, including support for the development of agricultural insurance instruments to protect farmers and agrobusinesses against insurable risk. COMPONENT 4: INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING AND PROJECT COORDINATION (INDICATIVE FINANCING US$25 MILLION) This component will focus on all aspects of overall project management, including fiduciary and safeguards aspects, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), knowledge management, and communication. It will also address critical cross-cutting institutional strengthening and training needs identified. Activities to be financed under this component include: (i) strengthening extension and the technical backstopping capacity of Government staff at all levels, filling the identified human resource gaps by financing higher technical qualifications of appropriate staff; (ii) establishing a rigorous M&E and Management Information Systems (MIS) and in their coordination with other essential line ministries; and (iii) support the capacity of the ministries to establish an effective fiduciary system for program funds management. The project will also support government ability for live monitoring of food and nutrition security crisis, leveraging on the Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan.etc. in addition to other climate, market risks-drought, flood inflation etc.