IFAD 03/07

Rome, 10 May 2007 – Kanayo F. Nwanze, Vice President of IFAD will travel to Tokyo, Japan from 14 to 15 May to hold bilateral meetings with senior officials from Japan’s Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Agriculture and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Nwanze will also deliver a lecture at Yayoi Hall, University of Tokyo on 14 May at 16:00 hrs. The lecture will focus on development issues in Africa, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the Tokyo International Conference on Africa's Development (TICAD) and the use of New Rice for Africa (NERICA).

Prior to the lecture, Vice President Nwanze will be available for one-on-one media interviews at Yayoi Hall beginning at 14.30 hrs.

Nwanze, a national of Nigeria, recently joined IFAD as its Vice President in March 2007, bringing to IFAD years of experience in international agricultural development and research including 10 years as the Director-General of the Africa Rice Centre (WARDA) from 1996 to 2006. WARDA and its partners were responsible for the development of NERICA, a new rice variety that combines the hardiness of local African rice species with the high productivity of Asian rice and has doubled yields in seven pilot countries in Africa. NERICA is resistant to drought and pests, produces higher yields even with little irrigation or fertilizer, and has a higher protein content than other type of rice.

During his tenure at WARDA, Nwanze was a principal advocate for the widespread adoption of the new rice variety, promoting    NERICA’s potential to increase rice production, improve nutrition, increase incomes and reduce imports. As well, under Nwanze’s leadership, WARDA scientists received the 2004 World Food Prize and the 2006 Fukui International Koshihikari Rice Prize.

NERICA’s development was led by Japan, which funded research at WARDA. IFAD has provided a total of US$2 million to WARDA to promote the use of NERICA in the region and a US$ 150,000 grant to accelerate NERICA seed multiplication activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and contribute to the revival of agriculture in the country.

Japan is a leader in providing development assistance to Africa: From 1993 – 2005 Japan has provided more than US$10 billion for Africa through bilateral ODA. In 2005, Japan announced that it would double its assistance to Africa within three years in order to help meet the MDGs. JICA has also identified Africa and the MDGs as major targets of its efforts.

Given the common development goals of the Government of Japan and IFAD, the two occasionally work together to reduce poverty in rural areas of the developing world by providing rural poor people with the assets they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

To date, Japan has pledged over US$ 300 million to IFAD’s regular resources. Japan has also pledged a further US$ 21.47 million to the Special Programme for Sub-Saharan Africa (SPA) and has provided US$ 60 million to cofinance seven IFAD projects: two in Sri Lanka, and one in Bangladesh, Gaza and the West Bank, Georgia, Togo and Zimbabwe.

Nearly 50 per cent of IFAD’s programmes and projects have been devoted to African countries since IFAD was established in 1977. African countries have received around US$4 billion in loans and grants to finance close to 345 programmes and projects in 51 countries.

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IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. Through low-interest loans and grants, IFAD develops and finances programmes and projects that enable poor rural people to overcome poverty themselves. There are 191 ongoing IFAD-supported rural poverty eradication programmes and projects, worth a total of US$6.6 billion. IFAD has invested US$3.1 billion, with cofinancing provided by partners including governments, project participants, multilateral and bilateral donors. These initiatives will help about 82 million poor rural women and men to achieve better lives for themselves and their families. Since starting operations in 1978, IFAD has invested US$9.8 billion in 751 programmes and projects that have reached more than 310 million poor rural women and men. Governments and other financing sources in recipient countries, including project participants, contributed US$9.2 billion, and multilateral, bilateral and other donors provided another US$7.2 billion in cofinancing.