The Minister of agriculture and rural development, Essimi Menye, and World Bank director of operations in Cameroon Gregor Binket signed an agreement for a grant amounting to FCFA 50 billion (US$105.3 million) to enable the country implement an agriculture investment and market development project (PIDMA) in Yaounde recently.

The PIDMA grant will be spread over the period 2014-2019 and will be implemented by the ministry of agriculture and rural development.

The funds will be invested mainly in maize, sorghum and cassava regarded as the main raw materials of agro-industrial structures established in Cameroon.

Agriculture currently employs about 60% of the active population in Cameroon but with the grant, many more would be employed, said PIDMA national coordinator Ngue Bissa Thomas.

The agriculture investment and market development project will upgrade the cassava, maize and sorghum sub-sectors to supply the buyers with raw materials: 20 000 tons of maize, 30 000 tons of sorghum, 1 400 000 tons of cassava. It will also promote productivity/production, quality and competitiveness of value chains.

The programme is linked to Cameroon and the World Bank’s strategy as it contributes to the 2010-2014 Cameroon country assistance strategy in increasing competitiveness and improving service delivery; contribute to the World Bank’s goal and strategy of ending extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity.

The PIDMA projects would help Cameroon support direct and sustainable partnerships between producer organizations and agribusinesses that are oriented by the demand of the market; improve farmers’ access to technologies, inputs, credit and market and to basic/key infrastructures including processing; strengthening the institutional capacity of producer organizations and agricultural services.

The agricultural in Cameroon is amongst other diversified and has great potential within the main farming systems; crops contribute 64% of the agricultural GDP, Livestock to 13%, Forestry to 9%, Industrial and Export crops to 8% and Fishery to 6%.

Cameroon’s vision and action for the agric sector includes increase agricultural growth beyond 5% by 2020; shift from the predominantly traditional subsistence agriculture to commercial and fully oriented to market; elimination of taxes on inputs, restructuring the seed sub-sector, availability of lower cost electricity; launching of an Agricultural Youth Support Programme to create employment for approximately 15 000 young agricultural entrepreneurs/year by 2015.

The main partners include the International Finance Cooperation and China for technology transfer with the development objectives of transforming the low productivity of subsistence-oriented cassava, maize and sorghum sub-sectors into commercially-oriented competitive value chains.

The direct and indirect beneficiaries include over 300 producer organizations and 30 000 head households working on three value chains in the cassava areas; agro-business; partner financial institutions; core public and private services providers: seeds, technology transfer, vocational training, cooperative reforms, agricultural statistics etc.