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Agency Launches $55M Agriculture Program in Southern Sudan
FrontLines - June 2010
By Angela Stephens
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USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah (left) attends the May 17 launch of the new Food, Agribusiness, and
Rural Markets program with southern Sudan Caretaker Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Samson
Kwaje in Juba, southern Sudan.
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JUBA, Southern Sudan—
USAID is undertaking a five-year,
$55 million agriculture program
with Sudan’s regional government
in southern Sudan, Administrator
Rajiv Shah announced May
17 on a visit to Juba.
The program aims to boost
food production and trade by
linking areas of high agricultural
potential with fast-growing markets
for farm goods through road
networks that are being improved
and expanded. The Food, Agribusiness,
and Rural Markets
(FARM) program will also train
farmers and others in the agricultural
sector.
Agriculture is the backbone
of economic development in
southern Sudan, employing the
majority of the region’s more
than 8 million people. More than
90 percent of southern Sudanese
live on less than $1 a day.
Southern Sudan is highly
dependent on food imports from
neighboring Uganda and
Kenya—and the imports are
expensive. Increased production
of domestically produced food is
expected to reduce the high food
prices in Sudanese markets.
The program will initially
target counties in southern
Sudan’s “greenbelt zone,” which
spans Western, Central, and
Eastern Equatoria states, all
places where conflict destroyed
agricultural production during
Sudan’s 22-year civil war. It will
help smallholder farmers rapidly
increase production of staple
crops.
Shah noted, “It is five to eight
times cheaper to give assistance
in agriculture than to distribute
food.”
| Agriculture is the backbone of economic
development in southern Sudan,
employing the majority of the region’s
more than 8 million people. |
He encouraged southern
Sudan’s government to allocate
10 percent of its budget to
agriculture.
Samson Kwaje, southern
Sudan’s caretaker minister of
agriculture and forestry, said the
program has the potential to turn
southern Sudan’s subsistence
farmers, “who produce only
food enough for the table,” into
commercial farmers able to earn
an income.
Another focus of the FARM
program is women because they
make up the majority of farmers
in southern Sudan, as in
many parts of Africa. “Unless
we focus on women in a very
fundamental way,” including
hiring female agricultural
extension workers, Shah said,
“we know these efforts will
simply not work.
According to the USAID-funded
Famine Early Warning
System Network’s latest analysis,
there are currently about
6.8 million food-insecure people
in Sudan (out of a population
of approximately 39 million),
including 2.3 million
internally displaced persons.
Five million of the food-insecure
are in northern Sudan,
including Darfur, and 1.8 million
are in southern Sudan,
concentrated in the states of
Jonglei, Northern Bahr El
Ghazal, Warrap, and Lakes,
and parts of Upper Nile and
Eastern Equatoria.
★
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by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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