PBA ReporterOnly eleven countries in both Southern and East Africa shall benefit from the $2.3 billion financing package under the World Bank’s Food Systems Resilience Programme.
With the funds billed to be disbursed in phases, the World Bank had to come to the rescue with the announcement of cashing out the sum of $2.3 billion towards helping severely affected countries in Africa.
World Bank said, the 11 countries that are set to benefit would include: Ethiopia, Madagascar, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo and Lesotho. Others are Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, South Sudan and Mozambique.
The funds would be disbursed in two phases. During the first phase, Ethiopia and Madagascar will receive a total sum of $788 million. At least, 2.3 million are expected to benefit from the financing package.
The remaining 9 countries will participate in the later phases of the food security resilience programme.
The World Bank further explained that the programme is mainly aimed at enhancing African countries’ inter-agency food crisis response strategies, including by strengthening early-warning systems and rapid-response planning, and boosting emergency support for food producers. It will also entail the creation of food reserves and other measures.
As you should know, many African countries have been grappling with food insecurity challenges caused by both natural and man-made factors such as drought, wars, the pandemic and most recently, the war in Ukraine.
We recently published an article detailing some of the countries that are set to experience worsened food crisis in 2022, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). We also reported on how people in East Africa are already going through tough economic times as food prices continue to soar to unprecedented highs.
The World Bank said as many as 66.4 million people across Africa could be affected by the escalating food shortage crisis.
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