African Development Bank has approved $80m loan in local currencies for OLAM Africa Investment Programme to deepen its agricultural value chain in Africa through investments in wheat and palm oil processing.
The programme, which includes five sub-projects in Cameroon, Ghana, Mozambique and Senegal, is meant to enhance regional food supply and act as a catalyst for job creation and sustainability of agribusiness sector.
According to a statement from the bank, African food and agricultural markets are extremely fragmented along regional, national and even local lines due to the predominance of small scale farming in the region.
It said harnessing the opportunities in the sector and successfully competing in the global market demanded efficiency in the deployment of labour and logistics infrastructure to link suppliers and buyers in the region.
The OLAM Group’s scale and existing distribution strength would positively impact the linkages, the bank said.
OLAM Aviv Investment Holdings, Mauritius, a fully owned subsidiary of OLAM Group, would be the programme’s borrowing entity, it stated.
OLAM Group, a leading global integrated supply chain manager with a presence in 65 countries, has built a leadership position in many of its businesses – including cocoa, coffee, cashew, sesame, rice, cotton and wood products.
In Africa, OLAM Group is present in 26 countries and conducts business in 28 countries. The group’s Africa business includes an integrated supply chain of 16 products, employing 6800 employees, 1,700 of which are women.
The group works with 3.4 million small-scale farmers in Africa and has 110 initiatives, covering 1.4 million farmers in Africa, to help address many of the issues faced by these smallholders such as poverty and lack of education, food security and basic social amenities.