The African Development Bank Group and the United Nations World Food Programme have signed an $87 million agreement to restore food production in Sudan.
The programme will back more than 230,000 farming households in a country where over 19 million people face crisis levels of hunger and where the most compelling evidence that the investment works is already walking in the fields.
The four-year Boosting Agrifood Systems Resilience in Sudan Project known as BOOST was launched on May 22 at the Bank’s East Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, targeting rainfed farming communities in Sennar State and Blue Nile State, two regions historically central to Sudan’s food supply but crippled by decades of rudimentary farming practices and the compounding devastation of conflict.
The project will fund training, agribusiness development, post-harvest loss reduction and market linkages, the full value chain that separates a subsistence farmer from an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneurial case for BOOST is not theoretical. It is documented in the testimony of the farmers already in WFP’s resilience programmes.
“During recent field visits across the country, farmers who already work with WFP in our resilience activities told me that they did not require food assistance even during the war,” said Abdallah Alwardat, WFP Sudan Country Director. “On the contrary, farmers supported by WFP have been able to preserve their agricultural schemes and even improve their yields of wheat and sorghum.”
That is the story BOOST is designed to scale. Across sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder farmers account for roughly 70 percent of food production yet remain chronically underserved by finance, markets, and technical support trapped not by lack of enterprise but by lack of infrastructure around that enterprise.
Sudan’s farming communities are an extreme expression of that gap. BOOST’s intervention, by organising farmer groups, delivering training, reducing post-harvest losses and connecting producers to local markets, targets the structural constraints that keep capable farmers poor.
The numbers set a concrete ambition. The project’s 230,000 farming households are expected to produce nearly one million metric tons of cereals and pulses over four years, sufficient to meet the annual cereal consumption needs of approximately nine million people and pulse consumption needs of more than 15 million. That is not aid. That is agricultural enterprise at national scale, financed by development capital and delivered through local hands.
“Investing in Sudan’s farmers is investing in the country’s recovery and long-term resilience,” said David Muthusi Mutuku, AfDB Country Manager for Sudan. “Through this partnership, the African Development Bank is supporting practical solutions that can contribute at scale to staple food production, strengthen rural economies and help communities withstand future shocks.”
BOOST builds on the Sudan Emergency Wheat Production Project, already implemented by WFP, and brings the combined investment between the AfDB and WFP in Sudan to nearly $267 million since 2023.
It is delivered by WFP in partnership with other UN entities and agricultural research institutions as a multi-organisation platform designed to transition Sudan from emergency food assistance toward self-sustaining local food production.
