Rural Development and Eradication of Poverty and Hunger

Rome, 27 April 2011- Soraya Rodriguez, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, and Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), presented the Spanish Food Security Cofinancing Facility Trust Fund to the Spanish Parliament’s Committee for Development Cooperation on Tuesday 26 April. The €300 fund – consisting of a €285.5 million loan and a €14.5 million grant from the Government of Spain – will help IFAD reduce rural poverty while boosting food security in developing countries.

At the meeting, Secretary Rodriguez emphasized that the establishment of the fund shows Spain’s commitment to eradicating poverty by increasing rural and agricultural development. Meanwhile, Nwanze praised the commitment made by the Government of Spain towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.  “At a time when countries are reducing their official development assistance, Spain is stepping up to meet urgent global needs,” he said.

Nwanze also indicated that the Trust Fund is an innovative outcome of a collaboration between his agency and the Government of Spain that will enable IFAD  to sharply increase its capacity for action. With these funds, IFAD will be able to provide 60 million poor rural women and men with opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty.

Throughout 2011, the IFAD Executive Board, of which Spain is a member, will review details of the first projects to be financed through the Trust Fund. Among these will include a loan to the Dominican Republic to promote the creation of agricultural small enterprises and the commercialization of crops with high market value; another to Senegal to help promote farmers access to markets and to new technologies; and to Bangladesh, to help the poorest farmers to cope with climate change challenges.

At the end of the meeting, Secretary Rodriguez and  Nwanze met the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, in the Palacio de la Moncloa.

Afterwards, together with Jesus Gonzalez Regidor, Professor of Development Economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid and Claudi Pérez, journalist of El País newspaper, they participated in the round table held at Casa Arabe entitled, “Price volatility for agricultural commodities. Implications and actions from the development agenda”. The round table was moderated by Gemma Martin Muñoz, Director of Casa Arabe.

At the round-table debate, Secretary Rodriguez stressed the importance of improving access of rural poor people, particularly rural women, to productive resources, without which she said sustainable economic development cannot be achieved.

Nwanze reminded the audience that an estimated 1.4 billion people live on less than one euro a day. Of them, 1 billion live in rural areas, and a majority depend on agriculture as their main source of living.” If we really want to eradicate extreme poverty it is necessary to transform the rural world, turn it into a place with opportunities where young people, who will feed the world in the next years, do not need to emigrate to other cities or to other countries.”

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Press release No.: IFAD/29/2011

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell more food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own lives. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$12.5 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering more than 370 million people to break out of poverty. IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome – the United Nation’s food and agricultural hub. It is a unique partnership of 166 members from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).