The Gambian leader, His Excellency President Adama Barrow will on Tuesday, 9th February, 2021 launch a US$80M project dubbed: “The Resilience of Organizations for Transformative Smallholder Agriculture Project (ROOTS)”, according to an invitation letter from the ROOTS Secretariat indicated.
The grand launching will be held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba International Conference Centre in Kololi, in which other high-profiled dignitaries are expected to grace the occasion.
According to the invitation letter, the ROOTS is a six-year project whose goal is to improve food security, nutrition and smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate change in The Gambia.
The Project Development Objective (PDO), the Secretariat informed, is to increase agricultural productivity and access to markets for enhanced food security and nutrition, and to improve the resilience of family farms and farmer organizations.
ROOTS is jointly funded by the Government of the Gambia, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), Ágence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), and the project beneficiaries with a total Project Cost of US$80 million.
ROOTS will be implemented in all the five Administrative Regions in the country, namely Central River, North Bank, Lower River, West Coast, Upper River targeting the population in these catchment areas, in particular smallholders, micro-entrepreneurs, and poor rural youth and women.
The letter further stated that ROOTS will build on the successes and draw lessons from IFAD-funded ongoing and past projects including the National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development Project (Nema), the Lowlands Agricultural Development Programme (LADEP), the Participatory Integrated Watershed Management Project (PIWAMP), the Rural Finance Project (RFP), and the Livestock and Horticulture Development Project (LHDP).
The ROOTS, the letter went on, will focus on upscaling Nema achievements in the rice and vegetable value chains, and contribute to the improvement of household food and nutrition security and farm incomes, while at the same time transitioning smallholder farmers (particularly youth and women) from subsistence to commercial entrepreneurs.
