Despite its tremendous agricultural potential, Burkina Faso has long grappled with the thorny problem of food and nutrition security.
Poor water usage, environmental degradation, vulnerability to climate change and lack of access to finance and to nutrition information are just some of the causes of food insecurity, which is widespread in the Sahel region.
And in a country, where 82% of the population is employed in the agricultural sector, low productivity has a knock-on effect on livelihoods.
An African Development Fund (ADF) initiative—the *Multinational Program to Build Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel—*has been successful in tackling food insecurity and building up the overall resilience of vulnerable populations of farmers, fishers and pastoralists in the country.
Under the initiative, the ADF, the African Development Bank Group’s concessional window that lends to low-income countries, has extended $32 mn—half of it in the form of grants—to the government. The program focuses on empowering women and on infant wellbeing. It is developing rural infrastructure to support sustainable hydro-agriculture, forestry, pastoralism, fisheries and beekeeping.