Press release No.: IFAD/34/08

Supplementary loan will bring total IFAD funding to US$13.5 million for Cape Verde Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme that will run until 2012 at a total cost of US$36.1 million.

Rome, 26 June 2008. A US$4.2 million supplementary loan to Cape Verde from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) will assist poor rural people to further integrate into the country’s fast-growing economy.

The agreement was signed today in Rome by José Eduardo Barbosa, Cape Verde’s Ambassador to Italy and IFAD President Lennart Båge.

The new IFAD financing will allow the existing Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme – costing a total of US$36.1 million – to be expanded to cover all rural areas of the West African islands.

It will make use of legal, institutional and financial mechanisms that have already proved effective in reducing rural poverty during the first two stages of the programme.

Food security and nutrition will be improved, incomes and market access will be improved and productivity in agriculture, fisheries and livestock will be increased. About 60,000 poor rural people, particularly women, will benefit.

“This model programme is becoming a major national policy instrument to fight poverty in rural areas” said Mohamed Béavogui, Director, West and Central Africa Division, IFAD.

“It will help implement Cape Verde’s Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy and serve as a laboratory to develop effective approaches to community-driven development in other countries in the region.”

The programme is financed under IFAD’s Flexible Lending Mechanism which releases funds in three phases.

The initial loan amounted to US$9.2 million over a ten-year period from 2000-2009 for a total cost of US$18.34 million. The Government of Cape Verde funded the rest of the loan and will provide approximately US$12 million for the third phase.

Since 1978, IFAD has made loans of US$28.6 million to Cape Verde to finance four rural development and poverty reduction projects valued at US$66.9 million overall.

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IFAD was created 30 years ago to tackle rural poverty, a key consequence of the droughts and famines of the early 1970s. Since 1978, IFAD has invested more than US$10 billion in low-interest loans and grants that have helped over 300 million very poor rural women and men increase their incomes and provide for their families. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is a global partnership of OECD, OPEC and other developing countries. Today, IFAD supports more than 200 programmes and projects in 81 developing countries and one territory.