IFAD loan for rural poverty alleviation

Cape Verde will receive a US $9.25-million loan to help combat rural poverty, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) said on Monday.

The money will finance a US $18.34-million rural poverty alleviation programme, which aims to empower grass-roots associations and groups by designing a mechanism that will allow the beneficiaries to formulate and implement their own priority demands, IFAD said. Some 50 percent of the population of the Cape Verde Islands live in rural areas where people have survived either by exploiting meagre natural resources, on remittances by family members abroad, or on wages for labour intensive works, it said.

The programme will fund some 650 micro-projects aimed at some 11,000 households, representing almost 50 percent of the poor people in the programme area. Although the programme has a national brief, it will initially be limited to the islands of Santo Antao, Fogo, Brava, Sao Nicolau and two municipalities of the islands of Santiago, Tarrafal and Sao Miguel, where more than two-thirds of the country’s rural poor live.

The projects will be implemented directly by the rural communities, with help from local non-governmental organisations and will focus on local infrastructure works, water supply, technical vocational training. Support will be provided to groups engaged in income-generating, social and natural resources management activities.