FAO gives grant for preparation of farming projects

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Central African Republic (CAR) government have signed a US $120,000 agreement to enable experts to prepare farming projects to be submitted to donors for funding, an FAO official told IRIN on Thursday. Etienne Ngounio-Gabia, FAO programme officer, said the funds were granted within the framework of the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), and followed a request from the government. He said that in 2000, the government and FAO had laid down an Agricultural Plan of Action, which had not been implemented due to civil strife in the country. He said the government experts would have until the end of August 2004, when a number of projects in farming, breeding, fishing and fish farming would be submitted to donors. All the projects would aim to enable the population of the CAR to attain food security. As in many other African nations, the people of CAR mostly depend on farming, but the country lacks strategies to modernise this vital sector. A September-October national forum urged the government to rectify this and to diversify crop cultivation. Meanwhile, Ngounio-Gabia said another feasibility study in the farming sector was underway in the Mbali Valley, some 80 km north of the capital, Bangui. He said the UN Development Programme had disbursed $10,000 for national experts to prepare projects to utilise water reserves that resulted from the construction of the Mbali hydro-electric dam in the 1980s. "That water reserve can generate many economic activities if properly exploited," Ngounio-Gabia said, noting that the valley was favourable for fishing, cattle-rearing and irrigated rice cultivation. He said FAO would oversee the study and that the experts would complete their work in April.