Democratic Republic Of Congo: African Development Bank To Lend $117M To Support Agricultural Transformation

The financial support comes from the African Development Fund, the Bank Group's concessional lending window, and includes $78.6 million from the Transition Support Facility – a financing instrument of the Bank aimed at countries in fragile and conflict situations.  

The project will make it possible to carry out a feasibility study on establishing a one-stop shop for issuing permits and licenses for climate-smart agricultural investments in the National Investment Promotion Agency, to support the development of a "Made in DRC" label, and to set up a digital platform to structure and organize actors in the target sectors through agricultural inter-professional organizations.

In addition, 500 trainers will be trained in entrepreneurship, improved techniques for the production and processing of agricultural products, and conflict management in the agriculture and agribusiness sectors. And two community centers will be built to develop innovative trades in support of agricultural transformation, including one specializing in sustainable, climate-smart agriculture. Four youth agribusiness entrepreneurship promotion centers will also be built.

Given the location of growth poles, the project will focus primarily on ten decentralized territorial entities (ETD) in five provinces: Kongo Central, Kasaï Oriental, Tshopo, Nord-Ubangi and Sud-Ubangi.

The project’s direct beneficiaries are the 25,000 young people (of which 50% are young women) and 500 trainers (of which 50% are women) targeted in the ten ETDs for developing skills, agribusiness and capacity building and to pilot the establishment of agricultural cadasters.