World Bank Ends North East Food Support Programme 2018

The World Bank says the disbursement of $50 million for the livelihood and food support programme under the Fadama III second Additional Financing (AFII) will end in first quarter of 2018.

Engr. Ibrahim Alkali, Project Desk Officer for Fadama III AFII, disclosed this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.

Alkali said that the bank had disbursed up to 75 per cent of the fund so far and hoped to achieve 100 per cent distribution by the end of the first quarter of next year.

NAN report the Fadama III AFII is the World Bank intervention to support and ensure food security and better livelihood for citizens in the affected areas through Fadama development projects.

The programme commenced on March 1, 2016 with the disbursement of $50 million project fund to benefiting states of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Taraba, Bauchi and Gombe.

He said: “the project has been performing wonderfully well. By all rating, Fadama AFII has been performing very well in the north east compared to other World Bank project in the region.

“Fadama AFII was the only project that its disbursement reached out to the beneficiaries in the six states of the region within a short period.

“We are able to reach out to 24,000 beneficiaries that we are targeting and able to make some savings. Hopefully before end of the year, we are going to reach out to 30,000 households.

“We actually appreciate our effort so far in the region and the performance is based on the caliber of staff that we have and their experience help in the disbursement.

The desk officer said that Fadama III AFII leveraged on the existing Fadama III structure which made it easy for it to reach out to targeted beneficiaries within a short time.

“I am satisfied with our performance because looking at the structure and the experience on ground we are hoping that we will partner with other projects or donors that have similar objectives as ours.

“It will be easy for us to reach out to those that are in need, the Internal Displayed Persons (IDPs), in terms of restoring their livelihood and support to restore their lives generally.

“We believe that what we are doing is going to be complementary and add value to what the Federal Government is going to do in the north east,’’ he added. (NAN)