The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) officially opened its East and Southern Africa regional office on June 7 in Nairobi to meet its goal of reducing hunger and poverty. Mr. Zhang Yijun, the minister counsellor of Chinese Embassy in Kenya attended the opening ceremony.
Since 1977, IFAD has made major investments in reducing poverty, increasing food security, improving nutrition and strengthening rural people’s resilience by providing more than US$23.2 billion in grants and low-interest loans to fund programmes and projects in developing countries. Last year, IFAD-supported projects reached an estimated 130 million people.
The regional office will be hosted at the UN Complex in Gigiri and will support portfolio performance, facilitate country programme knowledge sharing, streamline business processes, crowd-in development finance, and expand partnerships, resource mobilization and policy engagement.
The office will serve 22 countries in the region: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Comoros, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Sudan, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The region now has 50 ongoing IFAD-supported projects and programmes valued at US$4.2 billion spread over 17 countries.