ADB extends $80.2 million for recovery programmes

African Development Bank (ADB) has announced a grant and loan package of US $80.18 million to support recovery programmes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to target the educational, health and agricultural sectors, the bank's spokesman, Eric Chinje, told IRIN on Wednesday. The health-care project, worth $36.3 million, targets areas in eastern DRC devastated by ethnic fighting which claimed thousands of lives. The project will be directed at improving the health status of the population, especially the vulnerable groups. "The main objectives of the project are to help improve as well as reduce the high rate of morbidity and mortality due to communicable diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis," Chinje said in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. He went on to say that $7.6 million was committed to the reconstruction of the DRC's education system. Special attention would be devoted to improving access to education for children and youth in difficulty. Another portion of the package, about $36.3 million, will go to the rehabilitation of the agricultural and rural sectors. The project will seek to strengthen food security and reduce poverty. Areas of the provinces of Bas-Congo and Bandundu were chosen as priority intervention areas because of their high poverty level and because these two provinces account for 25 percent of the country's agricultural Gross Domestic Product. ADB said in a communiqué: "The project on agriculture will help in the revival of the sector under the government's ongoing efforts in the Emergency Multisector Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Programme." The agreements were signed during an ADB board of directors' annual meeting at Kampala's resort hotel of Munyonyo.