The African Development Fund, the concessional arm of the African Development Bank Group, has greenlit a $19.95 million grant aimed at bolstering livelihoods for women and youth in Sierra Leone.
This initiative, named “Job Creation for Youth and Women in Climate Smart Agriculture Value Chains and Waste Management,” will focus on sectors where women and youth are particularly active, such as cassava and fisheries.
The grant, falling under the Transition Support Facility’s Pillar 1, seeks to address the underlying causes of fragility and insecurity in Sierra Leone.
In tandem, the Global Center on Adaptation will contribute $159,600 for technical assistance in developing adaptation strategies, including waste management policies.
Halima Hashi, the Bank Group’s Country Manager in Sierra Leone, highlighted that 70 percent of the project’s beneficiaries will be women, underscoring the initiative’s commitment to gender equality and economic empowerment.
The project will concentrate on several key areas:
– Enhancing entrepreneurial skills in smart agriculture and waste-management value chains.
– Improving access to funding for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), economic groups, and cooperatives led by young people and women.
– Expanding market access for youth and women-led MSMEs.
– Building institutional capacity to improve the business environment and service delivery for entrepreneurs.
Key targets of the project include:
– Enhancing funding access for 700 MSMEs.
– Strengthening entrepreneurial and digital skills for 2,500 individuals in the cassava and fisheries value chains, with 70 percent of participants being women.
– Training 1,000 people in waste-management value chains, including 250 women.
– Facilitating business linkages between 700 MSMEs and large businesses.
– Creating a digital marketplace benefitting 5,000 smallholder farmers and 4,850 value chain MSMEs.
The project aims to generate 9,200 jobs, fortify climate change adaptation capacity for 3,500 youth and women, and boost MSME revenues by at least 10 percent.
This initiative is aligned with Sierra Leone’s BIG FIVE Agenda and medium-term National Development Plan (2024-2030), which aims to create 500,000 new youth jobs by 2030. It also supports the African Development Bank’s Ten-year Strategy (2024-2033) and its Country Strategy Paper (2020-2024) for Sierra Leone.
