The second phase of the Gabonese Agricultural Achievements and Initiatives of Committed Nationals (Graine) is in gestation. According to the Minister of Agriculture, this second act scheduled between 2021 and 2025 will require the construction of 772 km of agricultural tracks across the country.
Presented as one of the flagships of the strategy for transforming the Gabonese economy, the Gabonese agricultural achievements and initiatives of committed nationals (Graine) is preparing its second phase (2021-2025) after the first one carried out between 2015 and 2019. This is what the Minister of Agriculture announced during the ministerial cabinet council at the Prime Minister’s Office on September 17 in Libreville.
“We are in the infrastructure phase since there are a number of tenders that are prepared by the project management unit, to build 772 km of agricultural tracks in the country,” Biendi. Maganga Moussavou said.. Deployed in seven provinces, the first phase of Graine involved 843 agricultural cooperatives.
Above all, the program enabled the development of 13,551.29 ha for 9,767.92 ha planted (2,236.92 ha for food crops and 7,531 ha for oil palm) and 5,308.45 tonnes harvested (171.28 tonnes of bananas, 3,995.28 tonnes of cassava, 123,076 tonnes of pineapple, etc.); the creation of 1,200 direct jobs (85% of which are concentrated in the agro-industrial oil palm plantation of Ndendé); the start of fish processing and marketing activities by the Agricultural Transformation and Rural Development Company (Sotrader); etc.
Launched in 2014, the Seed program is the result of a public-private partnership between Olam International Limited and the Gabonese Republic, materialized by the creation in February 2015 of Sotrader. The program was designed to achieve three major objectives: ensuring food security in Gabon, improving the lives of Gabonese by offering them attractive agricultural entrepreneurial opportunities and improving Gabon’s trade balance.
