Sierra Leone Agro-Processing Competitiveness Project

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The development objective of the Agro-Processing Competitiveness Project for Sierra Leone is to improve business environment in agribusiness sector and increase productivity of targeted agro‐processing firms in Sierra Leone. The project comprises of three components. The first component is promote enabling environment for agro‐processing sector competitiveness and growth of agribusiness firms. It consists of following sub-components: (i) enabling business regulations for competitive agro‐processing; (ii) targeted retention and expansion of agribusiness investors by Sierra Leone investment and export promotion agency (SLIEPA); and (iii) building institutional capabilities in the Sierra Leone standards bureau (SLSB) to improve market access for small and medium enterprises (SMEs); and (iv) support to ministry of trade and industry (MTI), ministry of agriculture and forestry (MAF), and small and medium enterprises development agency (SMEDA) for stronger SME coordination. The second component is firm‐level support to increase productivity and strengthen competitiveness of agro-processing firms and SMEs in selected value chains. It consists of following sub-components: (i) firm‐level technical assistance (TA) and capacity building of ecosystem players; and (ii) provision of matching grants to SMEs. The third component is project implementation, coordination, and monitoring and evaluation (M and E).