Strengthening resilience of smallholder farmers in Sahelian countries

With the new programme, launched in March 2024, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is joining hands with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Africa Risk Capacity (ARC), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to build resilience among smallholder farmers to climate change impacts in seven Sahelian countries of the Great Green Wall: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and The Gambia.  

The Integrated Climate Risk Management Programme (AICRM): Strengthening Smallholder Farmers' Resilience to Climate Change Impacts is a six-year programme (2023-2029) with total financing of USD 143.4 million, including a GCF grant of USD 82.85 million and grant contributions from IFAD (USD 30.315 million), the AfDB (USD 23 million) and the ARC (USD 7.239 million).

The programme will build on IFAD’s current and past investments, creating synergies with the ongoing IFAD-supported G5 Sahel + Senegal regional programme. AICRM aims to strengthen and scale up the resilience and adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers and rural communities. It will restore more than 70,000 hectares of degraded forests and pastoral land and promote climate-smart agriculture on 200,000 hectares of land. Using an integrated climate risk management approach, the programme will mainly target crops like millet, maize, sorghum and groundnuts, as well as livestock. It will also promote inclusiveness and non-discrimination towards disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities, and is to focus particularly on youth and women.

Globally, over 500 million smallholder farms produce more than 80 per cent of the food in some regions. These farms, mostly as smallholder family farmers, are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the Sahel region, agriculture plays a fundamental role in the economy, accounting for 40 per cent of regional Gross domestic product (GDP), and employs approximately two-thirds of the workforce.

(IFAD/ile)

Read more on the IFAD website