ADF Grants $19.95 Million to Empower Women and Youth in Sierra Leone's Agriculture and Waste Management Sectors

Halima Hashi, the Bank Group’s Country Manager in Sierra Leone, emphasized that 70 percent of project beneficiaries will be women, promoting gender equality and economic empowerment.

The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund, the concessional window of the African Development Bank Group, has approved a $19.95 million grant for an initiative aimed at providing livelihoods for Sierra Leone’s women and youth. The "Job Creation for Youth and Women in Climate Smart Agriculture Value Chains and Waste Management" project targets value chains where youth and women are more active, such as cassava and fisheries.

This grant, part of the Transition Support Facility’s Pillar 1, seeks to address the root causes of fragility and insecurity in Sierra Leone. Additionally, the Global Center on Adaptation will provide a grant of $159,600 for technical assistance in developing adaptation strategies, including waste management policies.

Halima Hashi, the Bank Group’s Country Manager in Sierra Leone, emphasized that 70 percent of project beneficiaries will be women, promoting gender equality and economic empowerment.

The project will focus on:

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 include:

Improving funding access for 700 MSMEs

Strengthening entrepreneurial and digital skills for 2,500 people in the cassava and fisheries value chains (70 percent of them women)

Training 1,000 people in waste-management value chains (250 of them women)

Facilitating business linkages between 700 MSMEs and large businesses

Creating a digital marketplace benefiting 5,000 smallholder farmers and 4,850 value chain MSMEs

The project aims to create 9,200 jobs, strengthen climate change adaptation capacity for 3,500 youth and women, and increase MSME revenues by at least 10 percent.

This initiative aligns with Sierra Leone’s BIG FIVE Agenda and the medium-term National Development Plan (2024-2030), which targets creating 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.