At the end of September 2008, the World Bank approved 83 million dollars to finance the programme GFRP (Programme of Intervention to Meet the World Food Crisis) for Sub-Saharan African countries: Burundi, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Niger, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Somalia.
Besides, 100 million dollars were approved or re-allocated to eight African countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Ivory Coast, Érythrea, Ghana, Malawi, Togo and Madagascar as IDA funds. Thanks to these funds, the farmers, will receive grains, fertilizers and technical assistance. Programmes of school canteens will also be launched as well as projects of food security aimed at vulnerable populations. The World Bank plans to identify a total of 800 million dollars to finance the GFRP. The programme GFRP is based on many intervention axess among which immediate interventions to meet short and medium term needs sectoral interventions related to, for example, agriculture, food, health, social protection, energy ; and interventions based on instruments such as budget support to help alleviate the effects of the financial crisis in the short term and programmes os social protection for the most vulnerable populations and investment loans to stimulate reaction at the level of offer in the agricultural sector.
The basic principle of the programme is that the countries should be able to make their own intervention choice from a wide range of possible interventions, relating to their specific needs. The World Bank provides detailed technical advice adapted to these interventions. In addition to others, the ongoing interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa include the distribution of food rations to school pupils and other vulnerable groups.
