USAID Providing Niger with Farming Boost

Investing hundreds of millions of dollars to boost agriculture in Niger by improving water availability, upgrading road networks and developing markets will benefit at least four million Nigeriens, a U.S. aid agency said on Thursday.

The U.S. government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) announced in June a funding package worth $437 million for the West African nation, where four in five people work in farming and agriculture is the second-largest export after uranium ore.

Niger is among the world's poorest countries and consistently ranked bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index.

Frequent floods and droughts have decimated the crops of many of its some 18 million people and left them struggling to survive.

http://news.trust.org/item/20160922172414-tkktm

Alessandro Vannucci

#solar