USA and Switzerland disburse 32.2 million dollars for agriculture

Nampula (Mozambique), 31 Jan (AIM) – The United States and Switzerland, through their development agencies, signed on Monday, in the northern Mozambican province of Nampula, a memorandum of understanding worth 32.2 million dollars for agriculture promotion in the northern region.

The Project, which is named FTF Premier-Oholo (PRO), will be implemented between January 2024 and June 2027, covering the districts of Pemba (Cabo Delgado Province); Nampula, Nacala, Meconta, Malema (Nampula Province); Alto Molócuè and Gúruè (in the central province of Zambézia) and Cuamba, in the northern province of Niassa.

The agreement was signed by the director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Mozambique, Helen Pataki, and the head of Cooperation at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), Ilaria Dali, in the presence of the provincial governor, Manuel Rodrigues, and the ambassadors of the two partner countries.

USAID will provide 25.5 million dollars for the Feed the Future-Premier project and SDC will disburse 6.7 million dollars for Oholo project.

Both projects intend to benefit 112,000 people, 50 percent women and 40 percent young people, as well as creating 2,600 jobs and increasing the beneficiaries’ incomes by 30 percent.

The support covers the value chains of food products such as soya, maize, groundnuts, peas, cassava, beans, cashews, sesame and poultry.

According to Rodrigues, who hosted the event, the memorandum creating the partnership project between USAID and the SDC is a formal commitment with legal value by two partners who are committed to complementing the government’s actions.

“We believe that the success of the project is partly dependent on the sharing of information between the implementation team and local governments, including the provincial government. We also hope for joint planning and monitoring of actions as a way of ensuring a collective journey and strengthening ownership of the project by local government bodies”, he said.

“We would like to see the largest percentage of the project’s budget spent on concrete actions and not on purely administrative expenses”, he added.

For her part, the USAID Assistant Administrator, Isobel Coleman, said that, in the 16 years of the Feed the Future project, some valuable lessons have been learned.

“One of the lessons is that successful coordination between donors allows us to expand our impact. The PRO partnership between USAID and Swiss Development Cooperation will help farmers and entrepreneurs across the agricultural value chain move from subsistence farming to a market-based system”, Coleman said.

(AIM)

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