New investment to enhance South Sudan’s resilience and food security

A USD 46.2 million grant, recently approved by the African Development Bank Group aims to boost South Sudan’s agricultural productivity and build its resilience. The project will focus on developing women and youth businesses and will promote climate-smart approaches.

The Climate Resilient Agri-Food System Transformation Programme (CRAFT) will be implemented over six years, from September 2024 to December 2030, in nine South Sudanese counties and 32 payams (districts) in four states: Bahr el Ghazal in the north, Eastern Equatoria, Central Equatoria and Jonglei.

This is the African Development Bank (AfDB)'s first country investment following the “Feed Africa” Dakar 2 Summit in January 2023, where countries developed Food and Agriculture Delivery Compacts. South Sudan presented its Compact at the Summit, with the aim to increase production and productivity and improve food security and nutrition towards transformation of the agriculture and livestock sectors. This grant will contribute to achieving these objectives.

The project comprises four main components: large-scale deployment of climate-smart technologies and production systems; strengthening the priority value chains of businesses led by women and young people; promoting digital agricultural and climate advisory solutions; and developing professional, technical and entrepreneurial skills to create more jobs for women and young people. Four key commodities have been identified as priority: sorghum, rice, sesame and fisheries.

Themba Bhebhe, African Development Bank Group’s Country Manager for South Sudan, highlighted the project’s potential: “The programme’s activities will help boost productivity and produce an additional 350,000 tonnes of cereals (rice and sorghum) and 300,000 tonnes/year of fish by 2030. They will strengthen agricultural value chains and entrepreneurship, creating at least 200 more agri-food businesses that are more profitable for women and young people.” The project targets more than 500,000 direct beneficiaries, including producers, processors and entrepreneurs, women and young people, staff from training providers, agricultural extension coordinators and civil servants from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.

The FAO Investment Centre has provided substantial support to the design of the project, in close cooperation with the South Sudanese Government and the African Development Bank, and in consultation with development partners, NGOs, private sector, academia and communities.

Six technical experts from the Investment Centre contributed to the project design providing leadership in preparing its components and sub-components, implementation arrangements and costings to ensure the project’s relevance, impacts and sustainability.

The team successfully supported the design of a proposal for a competitive call to access funds of the AfDB Prevention Envelope of the Transition Support Facility. South Sudan was selected for an allocation of USD 26 million (inclusive to the USD 46 million grant). “This was an exciting and complex design for the Investment Centre team. It included experts covering irrigation, agribusiness, digital agriculture, institutional areas, economics, and social inclusion” summarized Pamela Pozarny, Senior Rural Sociologist and Team Leader at FAO Investment Centre.  

“The team consulted with Government counterparts throughout and engaged with experts from the FAO South Sudan country office and from the African Development Bank. This project really holds promise, building on successful interventions but also integrating innovative approaches to contribute to addressing the countries’ numerous challenges. The FAO country office in South Sudan, with vast experience, jointly with the Government of South Sudan, will now be responsible for implementation of activities through a hybrid implementation model.”

A strong agricultural potential

South Sudan has been faced with recurrent war and conflict since even before independence in 2011. It is the third most fragile state in the world (Fund for Peace (2020) and almost half of its population (46 percent) experiences high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Situation for September to November 2023).

Agriculture is the main source of income for approximately 95% of the population but agriculture is only practiced in less than 5% of suitable land and there is high potential to increase the contribution of the sector to the country’s development. The many rivers and lakes provide abundant fisheries resources and untapped possibilities for irrigation. The project is set to develop irrigation infrastructure for around 2,000 hectares of land and invest in soil and water conservation of 1,000 ha of degraded lands upstream of Lol River watershed.

Digitalization, climate-smart approaches and boosting agribusiness

With South Sudan being one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, climate-adaptive production systems were identified and placed at the heart of the project. It will encourage the development of climate-smart approaches with activities such as supporting the production of improved climate-adapted seeds, the setting-up of 240 farmer field and business schools in gardening techniques and the development of improved water-use efficient technologies.

The project will also aim at strengthening the digital ecosystem, enabling digital solutions to reach and benefit farmers, such as building on and expanding the existing e-registry, the ongoing e-extension support, and the delivery of climate advisory information through use of radio and video-based approaches. It will also support the Government in the development of a multi-sectoral digital agriculture strategy.

CRAFT will boost the development of agribusiness in the country, targeting in priority women and youth entrepreneurship. This will be done by supporting 1000 youth micro, small and medium agrifood businesses through incubation and investing in 500 youth-led start-ups, as well as establishing marketing organisations for sorghum, sesame, rice and fish processing farmers and encouraging greater access to digital banking services.