Paul Tasong, Minister Delegate at Minepat, and Thierry Marchand, French Ambassador to Cameroon, officially launched SECAL in Yaoundé on 15 December 2023.
Financed to the tune of 10.5 billion CFA francs by the French Development Agency (AFD) through the reserve funds of the third Debt Reduction and Development Contract (C2D), the Support Project for Food Security in Rural Areas of Cameroon (SECAL) is one of the responses to the security crises and inflationary tensions caused by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war, which have seriously eroded the gains made by certain actions taken by the government in the fight against food insecurity. The aim of his interventions is to support the public authorities in the successful implementation of the Rural Sector Development Strategy backed by the SND30.
Paul Tasong, Minister Delegate at Minepat, and Thierry Marchand, French Ambassador to Cameroon, officially launched the project in Yaoundé on 15 December 2023. The aim of this new project is to make a lasting contribution to job creation, inclusive growth and food security in the country, by improving the ecosystem of rural businesses identified in the various production basins. Its implementation will, among other things, boost the productivity and production of agricultural and agri-food products in rural areas, improve the range of financial services tailored to rural entrepreneurs, support the resilience of food and nutrition systems in rural areas, and improve the availability and accessibility of agricultural products, as well as the storage and marketing of these products in rural areas.
The implementation of this major project, which will run from 2024 to 2026, will be based on the three existing public programmes and projects, namely ACEFA, AFOP and TRANSFAGRI. According to the Minister Delegate at Minepat, the aim of this pooling is ‘to strengthen the coherence of interventions on the ground and to achieve a greater leverage effect, as part of the response to the problems of food and nutritional security’.
For his part, the French ambassador to Cameroon stated that the implementation of this project, the idea for which originated during the French Head of State’s last official visit to Cameroon in July 2022, is the result of Emmanuel Macron’s desire to support the Cameroonian government’s efforts in the agricultural sector. What’s more, ‘the aim here is to strengthen Cameroon’s agricultural power, not only to feed its population, but also to export its surplus production to neighbouring countries’, emphasised Thierry Marchand.
‘It will also help to strengthen the coherence of interventions on the ground and achieve a greater leverage effect, as part of the response to the problems of food and nutritional security’.
By Priscille Laure BADANG
Source: CAmeroun Emergent
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