27 June 2007 – The United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has announced a new $10.9 million programme to bring small loans and jobs to the young people of rural Sierra Leone, benefiting 34,000 households in the West African country that saw the end of civil strife and the installation of an elected Government in 2002.

The Rural Finance and Community Improvement Programme will establish rural financial services – using a model that IFAD has developed and applied successfully in Benin for 10 years – in the four remote eastern districts of Koinadugu, Kono, Kailahun and Kenema.

“To consolidate peace, the programme’s primary target is young people, including ex-combatants, sexually abused young women and single mothers,” said IFAD’s country programme manager for Sierra Leone, Mohamed Tounessi. “IFAD is the only donor working in Koinadugu, the largest district covered by the programme and the most remote in the country.”

Under the programme, villagers will learn how to set up and operate their own financial services associations, which will build equity and make microcredit available.

The new activity will also create jobs for young people and rebuild key infrastructure like roads, water supplies, schools and health centres. In addition, the programme will conduct awareness-building campaigns, particularly about HIV/AIDS and nutrition.

The programme will be funded largely by a grant of $9.9 million from IFAD. The Government will provide additional financing of $500,000, and programme participants will contribute another $500,000.

With this latest scheme, IFAD will have financed six programmes and projects in Sierra Leone for a total commitment of $57 million.

A high-level meeting aimed at salvaging sputtering global trade talks collapsed on Thursday as the United States and the European Union fell out with India and Brazil over plans to slash agricultural subsidies and tariffs.
The four members of the World Trade Organization were trying to break a persistent deadlock that has bedeviled the Doha round of negotiations since 2001: How deeply rich countries will slash the domestic farm subsidies that have distorted trade in commodities like cotton, sugar and corn.
The failure of the talks appears to have defeated the strategy of bringing together the United States, Europe, Brazil and India – a grouping known as the G-4 – to resolve major differences before turning to the entire membership of the WTO, which comprises 150 countries.
Brazil and India, two countries that have assumed a leadership role for much of the developing world, rejected American and European advances as insufficient to warrant opening their markets to more imports of the industrialized world’s goods and services. The United States, in turn, charged that Brazil and India had arrived at the talks, being held in the German town of Potsdam, outside Berlin, with virtually no negotiating flexibility.
Now, the U.S. trade representative, Susan Schwab, will head to Geneva, where she will meet with the WTO director general, Pascal Lamy, and appeal to other developing countries to pressure Brazil and India for new concessions that would jump-start the round.
“We are absolutely determined not to give up on the Doha round,” Schwab said. “It may be that the G-4 process does not get us there.”
The breakdown Thursday, though a serious blow, does not appear to have triggered the same level of despair as a similar episode last August, when Lamy officially suspended the Doha round. Though Lamy said in a statement on Thursday that an agreement in Potsdam “would have been helpful,” he held out hope that other members could resuscitate the negotiation.
“Helpful does not mean indispensable,” Lamy said. “This negotiation is an endeavor among the 150 members of the WTO.”
Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, likewise acknowledged the setback even as he underscored the heavy burden WTO members now face.
“It is not the end of the Doha round,” Mandelson said. “It places a very major question mark on the ability of the wider WTO membership to complete this round but does not in itself mean that the negotiations cannot be put back on track.”
U.S. officials placed the blame the deadlock in Potsdam squarely, and explicitly, on the shoulders of Brazil and India, two countries that they said showed no flexibility at all when the meeting, which was supposed to have lasted through Saturday, began on Tuesday.
“They adopted that attitude from the beginning and it cast a chill over the entire week of the discussions,” said Mike Johanns, the U.S. secretary of
agriculture.
U.S. officials said they sounded out various negotiating scenarios with Brazil and India but received no hints that they would scale back their own trade barriers.
“Large economies like Brazil and India should not stand in the way of progress for smaller, poor developing nations – but that appears to be what happened in Germany this week,” Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said.
Kamal Nath, the Indian trade minister, said the United States had offered to cap its domestic agricultural subsidies at $17 billion, considerably lower than the $22 billion it had offered before, but still well above the roughly $11 billion that American farmers are currently receiving. Nath said that offer had “no logic or equity,” a point his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, echoed.
“It was useless to continue the discussion on the basis of the numbers put on the table,” Amorim said
Fights among the major trading nations has traditionally spelled the end of global trade talks, since other countries can avoid making their own concessions as long as the biggest players are split. But Schwab said that she would appeal to other developing countries by making the argument that Brazil and India – as well as China, which was not present in Potsdam – are serving their interests badly.
Brazil, Schwab said, is a major agricultural exporter while India is strong in services and China is a manufacturing powerhouse. If other developing countries are going to compete with them, the more advanced nations like Brazil and India need to reduce their trade barriers as well, she argued.
“When you are in the leadership circle you have to lead by example and that’s not what we are seeing,” Schwab said.
Mandelson also said Doha was worth an extra effort following the failure in Potsdam, but he insisted that the 27-nation EU has so far made extensive concessions with no reciprocity.
“I firmly believe we constructed a landing range in agriculture which is fair and forthcoming for developing countries and takes to the limit what the EU can do,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying.

Truth About Trade & Technology – Global trade talks collapse over agricultural subsidies

Knowledgeable sources confided in the New Citizen yesterday, “the Foundation has played a very important role in the reactivation of ginger production in Sierra Leone as the surest way of complementing government in its strive towards direct poverty reduction and food security, create access to market for ginger and other spicy products such as hot pepper, thus the establishment of the Foundation was considered very relevant.”
The Foundation is only two years old with fast growing abilities in meeting international market standards, especially that of the European market. At the moment, plans are underway for the Foundation to conduct a market and production survey as a strategy for improvement to cope with external market demands as well as the domestic market.
Furthermore, in April and May 2006, Cotton Tree Foundation Ginger Enterprises made a trial export of 18 metric tonnes of ginger to Netherlands. Between January and May this year, the Foundation exported another 38 metric tonnes of sliced dried ginger to the Netherlands. “These efforts by the Foundation indicate the potentials of this enterprise for the unforeseeable future,” a source underscored.
The enterprise is an added value in its chain of production and has a proven performance along side these efforts, the Foundation is developing in line with its social objectives with other cash crops such as sesame, cashew, groundnut, chill/hot pepper with a view to link the labour of small scale producers with the external market in addition to poultry and livestock.
In addition to the agricultural sector, the Foundation continues to provide quality educational opportunities to marginalized communities or groups. One recent beneficiary is the Bombali School for the Blind, Pan-Lap, Makeni.
Also, the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany has approved a school building construction project.
All other educational institutions supported by Cotton Tree Foundation are progressing satisfactorily. “If other NGOs can emulate the sterling example of Cotton Tree Foundation, Sierra Leone will rapidly attain food self-sufficiency in addition to alleviating acute poverty,” a UNDP development expert pointed out.

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