By Awan Achiek
South Sudan plans to boost its agriculture potentials with a new funding of $113.2 million grant from the World Bank, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Josephine Joseph Lagu said.
The funding, which will benefit the Resilient and Livelihoods Project, and Emergency Locust Response Project, will support training of farmers to efficiently manage their farms and adopt new technology to boost their yields.
“The two projects were crafted to help increase agricultural production to restore rural livelihood and contribute ending food and nutrition insecurity,” Lagu said.
Ousmane Dione, the World Bank Country Director for South Sudan said the project will provide direct income to most vulnerable households to enable them produce more food.
“South Sudanese deserve to be able to produce enough food, they deserve to be able to eat enough and they deserve to stock enough harvest,” said Dione.
He said successful implementation of the projects will help restore hope and confidence to South Sudan’s development partners to avail more support to the country.
The recent Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission report released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Food Program said that the deficit in South Sudan’s cereal production is estimated at an all-time high of 465,600 tons in 2021.
The report said cereal production in 2020 rose by seven percent on a yearly basis to around 874,400 metric tons.
