World Bank commits $4.5b to poverty fight

Oct 26, 2013

The World Bank has committed $4.5b (about sh12 trillion) to eradicating poverty in Africa by 2030, an official has said.

By John Semakula

The World Bank has committed $4.5b (about sh12 trillion) to eradicating poverty in Africa by 2030, an official has said.

Frank Byamugisha, a lead land specialist with the World Bank, said a huge sum of the funds would be injected into improving land administration and documentation.

“Documentation of land boosts productivity on the cultivated land and helps to put into production the vast amount of unused land,” Byamugisha said. 

He noted that undocumented land was vulnerable to land grabbing and expropriation with little or no compensation, which affect Agricultural productivity.

Byamugisha made the remarks in an exclusive interview with New Vision.

He said that documentation of land was not only critical to protecting local communities but also in providing security to investors.

According to the World Bank, less than 10% of the rural land in Africa is documented which affects production in the Agricultural sector.

Byamugisha observed that poor documentation of land in Africa has kept the continent’s productivity low, standing at 25% of its potential.

He said that the World Bank is now viewing Agriculture as the only sector that can generate jobs and incomes for Africans to get out of poverty. The sector employs 70% of the population on the continent.

“Clearly there is still a lot of room for productivity growth in agriculture for the sector to become a key driver of income and job growth in Africa,” Byamigisha said.

He noted that when China and Vietnam dismantled their collective farms in 1978 and 1988, respectively and used long-term leases to allocate land rights to farming households, they launched an era of prolonged agricultural growth that transformed lives.

“When China effected the changes, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty in the country declined from about 80% in 1981, the highest in the world at that time, to only 13 percent in 2008,” Byamugisha said.

He also noted that African countries, like Rwanda and Ethiopia which have also adopted similar the land administration reforms have experienced significant growth.

“Ethiopia reduced extreme poverty from over 40 percent to 30 percent in the last 10 years, while Rwanda reduced it from 55 percent to 40 percent in the same period,” Byamugisha said.



 

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