Fact Sheet: Supporting South Sudan’s Vision for the Future

USAID Focusing on Agricultural Development to Strengthen Economic Growth 

Through Feed the Future, President Obama’s food security initiative, the United States has focused on agricultural development to drive broad-based economic growth in the Republic of South Sudan. USAID is working with a range of partners on this effort including John Garang University, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC). Goals include increasing agricultural resiliency, supporting high-quality agricultural inputs and services and building an enabling agricultural infrastructure. 

As part of this focus, USAID also recently designed the first-ever credit guarantee in the newly independent South Sudan to support local lending to the country’s agriculture sector. Working with AGRA, the Development Credit Authority guarantee will mobilize $7 million in private financing for agriculture lending from Equity Bank and Finance Sudan. Negotiations are underway to include an additional commercial bank. The six-year guarantee will provide partial risk protection for bank lending to key agricultural aggregators, input suppliers, entrepreneurs, and other small-scale businesses in the agriculture value chain.