IFAD working with International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) for soil fertility restoration and management in resource-poor areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia

The rural poor often have to produce their crops on weathered and fragile soils of low-to-moderate fertility. In particular, supplies of nitrogen and phosphorus soil nutrients are limited in many developing regions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Soils degrade due to the intensification of land-use, while resource-poor farmers do not have access to the necessary amounts of fertilizer inputs to replenish and maintain soil fertility. Productive soils are also lost through poor management practices and disappearing soil-binding vegetative cover (forests). Declining fertility takes the form of loss of organic matter, nutrient mining and breakdown of soil structure, thus preventing farmers from achieving the full potential of yield possibilities and productivity levels.

IFAD has financed pioneering IFDC-led initiatives to promote the availability and efficient use of the two major soil nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorous – and the use of indigenous phosphate rock instead of packaged fertilizers that are considered too costly for farmers in Africa. These initiatives have been successfully tested and developed in the IFAD- financed Eastern Ord Rural Development Project in Burkina Faso and they were further explored during the implementation of four IFAD-financed projects in Madagascar, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Togo.

In 1991, IFAD facilitated the establishment of the African Centre for Fertilizer Development (ACFD), based in Harare, Zimbabwe, under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

IFAD continues to work with IFDC, with a view to increasing agricultural productivity among resource-poor farming systems in Asia by improving the use of on and off-farm soil nutrients – organic as well as chemical – and increasing farmers' access to inputs, which can lead to improved, more efficient and more environmentallysound production technologies.

Building on its successful partnership with IFAD to date, IFDC is now exploring new opportunities in the rural-based fertilizer agro-industry, and improve the utilization efficiency of phosphate by the crop.