Project Launched to Support Farmers

A new €81.9 million project that will help more than one million vulnerable small-scale farmers in Chad improve their incomes and food security and boost an underperforming agricultural sector hampered by recurrent droughts and rain-fed farming practices has been launched.

The Strengthening Productivity and Resilience of Agropastoral Family Farms Project (RePER) includes €49.3 million grant and €5.3 million loan from IFAD, as well as cofinancing from the Green Climate Fund grant (€17.1 million), the Government of Chad (€7.6 million) and by the beneficiaries themselves (€2.6 million). The project was launched at a start-up workshop involving project participants, government officials, development partners, farmers’ organizations and IF AD staff. Ga yang So uaré, Minister of Livestock and Animal Productions of the Republic of Chad, and Valantine Achancho, IFAD Country Director for Chad opened the workshop.

Despite the challenges posed by the decline of economic growth and the impacts of climate change, the Chadian agricultural sector offers significant development opportunities for smallholder farmers.

RePER will raise the performance and resilience of agropastoral family farms by strengthening agricultural water infrastructure; rehabilitating rural feeder roads; intensifying and diversifying family farming production systems; supporting value addition for agropastoral products; improving nutrition; improving adult literacy; supporting farmers’ organizations and improving access to financial services.

“The Government express es its satisfaction with the satisfactory results recorded by the PADER-G completed in 2017 and the ongoing Project to Improve the Resilience of Agricultural Systems (PARSAT),” said Gayang Souaré at the launching ceremony. “It is based on these results that the two parties, Government and IFAD, have engaged in this strategic step toward strengthening agro-silvo-pastoral resilience with the RePER Project.”