Habesha Brewery S.C. signed a 50-million-euro agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to ramp up barley sourcing from local smallholder farmers. The loan was co-funded by Dutch Development Bank, Rabobank and ING Bank. Alongside the monetary financing, the financiers will help the farmers access improved seed variants, agricultural inputs, capacity building in the best practices of agronomy and business management. The brewing sector imports as much as 90pc of its malt barley, because local production cannot satisfy the demand of the industry. The project is expected to double the current yield production and augment income for 15,000 existing farmers and create 500 jobs. “We aim to increase the number of farmers from 1,000 to 14,000 in the course of five years and uplift their income," Zewdu Negate, CEO of Habesha Breweries, said.
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