Emergency Support to Rural Livelihoods & Food Systems Exposed to COVID-19 (ESRF) was developed by the Government of Ghana as a result of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic that ravaged the world in 2019. The project was designed as an emergency stopgap to mitigate the impacts of the disease on smallholder farmers and food systems.
To implement the project, the Government of Ghana received a loan facility from IFAD.
The Project is expected to directly benefit 50,000 vulnerable people in 25,000 households, with 5% inclusion of People with Disabilities (PwD). The targeted value chains are maize, rice, soya beans, roots and tubers, fruits and vegetables; and poultry and small ruminants. The value chains under implementation, however, include maize, rice, soya beans, vegetables and poultry.
The expected result is that
i) target households succeed in maintaining or increasing their production, food security, and climate change resilience compared to the pre-COVID-19 situation; and
ii) target households succeed in maintaining or increasing their market linkages, sales volume and income levels from market participation compared to pre-COVID-19 situations.
The total funding for the project is USD 40.1 million. Sources of financing for ESRF are IFAD loan of USD 20.0 million and an estimated co-financing from the Government of Ghana (through exemptions on taxes and duties) amounting to USD 5.3 million (12.6% of total cost); beneficiary contribution of USD 11.2 million (27% of total cost); other development partners i.e., World Food Programme (WFP) is contributing USD 2.0 million; the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is contributing USD 0.4 million; and the Government of Canada (GoC) with USD 2.6 million.
Project Goals
The overall goal of ESRF is to contribute to protecting the livelihoods, incomes, and resilience of target groups from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. The Project’s Development Objective (PDO) is to mitigate the threats to production, food security and market access posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate. The Project has three main components which include:
Project Components
- Protect against hunger and build resilient livelihoods;
- Safeguard rural marketing linkages and food security; and
- Project Management, Monitoring and Evaluation.
Component 1: Protect against hunger and build resilient livelihoods. This component has two sub-components as :
sub-Component 1.1: Secured access to agricultural inputs and food supply; and
Sub-component 1.2: Income generation activities and diversification of food and nutrition supply
Component 2: Safeguard rural marketing linkages and food security, which is further sub-categorized into three sub-components:
sub-component 2.1: Support to output marketing linkages; and
sub-component 2.2: Support digital marketing platforms
sub-component 2.3: Rural Infrastructural Development
Component 3: Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation