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Add to Preferred SourcesA rural town in the district of Toliara in south-west Madagascar has been completely transformed, much to the benefit of its inhabitants. This is the result of the funding programme launched in 2013 by the African Development Bank with the goal of improving local agricultural infrastructure.
At the time, the Bank had two goals: the first was to compensate for the budget cuts made by the Malagasy Government that particularly hit the poorest after Madagascar’s political crisis between 2009 and 2013; the second was to mitigate the impacts of the region’s extreme vulnerability to climate change.
By the end of December 2018, the district of Toliara had 74 km of canals and 40 km of protective dykes covering 5,800 hectares of irrigated land, as well as three warehouses.
To support this expansion of local agriculture and to reduce poverty, the African Development Bank also financed the refurbishment of a 107 km section of the RN9 highway. Since then, Tsianisiha has been just an hour and a half’s drive from the neighboring town of Analamisampy. Before the refurbishment work, it took up to five hours to travel between the two towns.
The three warehouses are used to store large equipment and production offered for sale in a particularly innovative way. Thanks to recommendations made by the African Development Bank, women’s groups obtained exclusive management rights, promoting the empowerment and emancipation of women in the region.
Original source: AfDB
Published on 25 January 2019