AfDB to provide 549mln USD to support drought-hit African nations

The Africa Development Bank (AfDB) has announced plans to provide 549 million U.S. dollars in support of 14 countries affected by the ongoing drought in Eastern and Southern Africa.

A statement from AfDB received Tuesday in Nairobi said the drought response package consists of 5 million dollars in emergency relief, and 361 million dollars in short-to-long term support from various windows of the bank's financial instruments.

"This amount represents new financial resources. The AfDB will put in place a mechanism that would ensure faster disbursements of funds in ongoing projects, which were designed to build the affected countries' resilience to drought," the bank said.

This, it said, will make available an additional amount of 183 million dollars in 2016.

Countries in the Eastern and Southern Africa are currently experiencing severe droughts that have disrupted crop and livestock production systems in about 14 countries.

The Pan African bank has acknowledged the severe impact of the El Nino weather pattern that is associated with abnormally high temperatures and the worst drought the region has seen in decades, which leaves almost 36 million people in need of food assistance.

"The increased frequency and severity of droughts is linked to global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions," the statement said, adding that African agriculture is nearly 95 percent rain-fed, thus highly vulnerable to fluctuations in rainfall patterns. Enditem