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Fight against food insecurity
World Bank to support Cameroon with FCFA 60 billion
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The World Bank has decided to support Cameroon with FCFA 60 billion to fight against food insecurity in the country, notably in the Far North region.
The information was revealed after an audience granted to the World Bank Regional Director for Sustainable Development for Africa, Simeon Ehui, by Cameroon’s Minister of Agriculture Gabriel Mbairobe on March 8, 2022. Cameroon Tribune said.
“With Cameroon, we are discussing a US$100 million (nearly XAF60 billion) project aimed at combating food insecurity. The objective is to see how we can mature and finalize the project,” said Simeon Ehui at the end of the audience.
From the discussions, it all indicates that Cameroon is getting set to combat a problem about 2.4 million residents have been enduring since December 2021
(as disclosed by the Ministry of Agriculture on January 25, 2022, during a workshop to validate the National Response Plan to Food and Nutritional Insecurity-NRP).
Going by the Ministry of Agriculture, this project will aid increase food assistance to people in acute need by ten. It will also assist small-scale farmers increase agricultural produces while raising awareness about the impacts of climate change.
In Cameroon, the scale of food insecurity differs according to region. It is generally observed in regions whose harsh climate negatively impacts yields (North, Far North, and Adamaoua) and those where refugees increase demand for food products (East, Far North, North, and Adamaoua). It is also observed in regions where there is insecurity (East and Adamaoua with the Central African rebels, then the North-West and South-West with the separatist crisis).
Cameroon is still facing threats to its food supply from violence, disaster and poor government support. Last year, the Japanese government donated an additional fund of FCFA 1 billion to fight food insecurity, making an overall envelope of FCFA 8.5 billion disbursed for this purpose.
Today, the WB has also decided to support the fight against food insecurity. This comes after OCHA Cameroon’s announcement on acute food security that will hit the Far North region in the coming months. According to the NGO, “Action Against Hunger, ” approximately 901,042 people will have great difficulty in accessing food, thereby leading to starvation.
The food insecurity is blamed on insecurity, scarcity of rains, attacks of grain-eating birds and pachyderms on crops which have seriously disrupted the 2021 agricultural season leading to a threat in the food security of several communities ”, Ocha Cameroon reveals.
Action Against Hunger in an article published last week revealed that the poorest families in this region are already out of food stock. For these families, the lean season started earlier than expected. This is the period when the products of previous harvests run out, and it generally begins in June.
To make matters worse, this lean period is accompanied by an inflation of cereal prices on the markets. “In markets like that of Makary for example, the price of a 92 kg bag of millet, the main local staple, rose from FCFA 20,000 in January 2021 to FCFA 28,000 in January 2022, an increase of 29%”, according to officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Minader), Action Against Hunger stated.