Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation & Partners Donate $90 Million to Farmers in Africa

 

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced two partnerships and $48 million in grants to help hundreds of thousands of small cocoa and cashew farmers in sub Saharan Africa to significantly increase their incomes so they can lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. 

The two grants — $23 million to the World Cocoa Foundation and $25 million to Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit – were awarded in conjunction with $42 million in cash and contributions from private industries.  The grants are part of the foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative, which is working with a wide range of partners in sub Saharan Africa and South Asia to strengthen the entire agricultural value chain – from seeds and soil to farm management and market access – so that progress against hunger and poverty is sustainable over the long term.

Cocoa and cashews provide income for millions of small farmers in sub Saharan Africa, who live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for their food and income. The projects will help farmers improve the quality and quantity of their crops and provide them with reliable opportunities to sell their crops so they can build better lives for themselves and their families.

The cocoa project aims to increase farming household incomes through improved farmer knowledge and productivity, better cocoa quality, crop diversification, and improved supply chain efficiencies. The five-year project will reach approximately 200,000 cocoa farming households. The project will complement the broader work of the World Cocoa Foundation, which works in partnership with its industry members to ensure cocoa cultivation is sustainable and delivers greater benefits to the farmers who grow it.

The cashew project aims to improve the quality of raw cashew nut cultivation, increase farmer productivity, improve linkages between smallholder farmers and the marketplace, build African processing capacity, and promote a sustainable global market for African cashews. The project’s goal is to help 150,000 cashew farming households in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Mozambique increase their incomes by 50 percent by 2012.