Ethiopia's Wheat Dream Soars with $83m Boost

Aug 5 , 2023

A grant that aims to scale up the capacity of smallholder wheat farmers for the next five years is underway with projects focused on climate, finance, production and market linkages. The African Development Fund indited the 84.3 million dollar agreement with Ahmed Shide, minister of Finance and Abdul Kamara, deputy director general of East African Region at ADB last week. Nearly 52.1 million quintals of wheat were harvested from 1.6 million hectares of land during the Meher season, falling significantly short of the country’s annual demand of 97 million quintals. According to the announcement made by the Ministry, the project envelops climate smart wheat production, market linkage infrastructure and agri-finance project coordination and management. The grant incorporates 54 million dollars from the ADF and 20 million dollars from the government of the Netherlands with the remaining 10.3 million dollars coming from the African OCP and Global Center for Adaptation (GCA).