- AfDB Pushes $680 Million Rice Transformation Plan to Cut West Africa’s Import Dependence
The African Development Bank has intensified efforts to transform West Africa’s rice sector, unveiling a regional investment strategy aimed at reducing the region’s heavy reliance on imports and unlocking large-scale private capital for agricultural industrialisation.
Speaking at the West Africa Rice Investment Roundtable in Accra, Richard Kwaku Ofori-Mante warned that the region’s annual importation of nearly 12 million metric tonnes of rice, valued at more than $3.5 billion, remains a major economic and food security risk.
“This is not just a food security concern,” he said. “It is a significant macroeconomic vulnerability, placing sustained pressure on foreign exchange reserves and representing a missed opportunity for domestic value creation, industrial development and large-scale job creation.”
His remarks come as governments across West Africa seek to strengthen food sovereignty following years of global supply disruptions, rising commodity prices and climate-related shocks that have exposed the risks of dependence on imported staples.
Despite the challenge, Ofori-Mante argued that the region already possesses the ingredients necessary for self-sufficiency, including vast agricultural land, expanding consumer markets, growing private sector participation and a youthful workforce capable of driving agricultural transformation.
“The opportunity already exists,” he said. “The question is whether we are prepared to move from ambition to execution at scale.”
The AfDB’s intervention is anchored in the outcomes of the 2023 Dakar 2 Food Summit, where African leaders, development finance institutions and private sector stakeholders committed to accelerating agricultural production and reducing the continent’s dependence on food imports.
Under that agenda, the bank pledged to mobilise $10 billion for Africa’s agricultural transformation and subsequently developed the Regional West Africa Resilient Rice Value Chains Development Programme, known as REWARD.
The programme, valued at $680 million, covers all 15 ECOWAS member states and is designed to strengthen the full rice value chain, from irrigation and seed development to mechanisation, aggregation, processing, logistics and market access.
Rather than focusing only on increasing production, Ofori-Mante said the initiative seeks to build competitive and climate-resilient rice economies capable of attracting sustained private investment.
The bank has already approved nearly $136 million for initial rice-related interventions, including regional grants to ECOWAS and country-specific projects in The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire.
Ghana has also secured fresh support under the programme.
According to Ofori-Mante, the board of the African Development Fund last week approved an $18.6 million grant to support implementation of the REWARD project in the country.
The programme is expected to benefit more than one million farmers while creating opportunities for thousands of agribusinesses across the value chain, particularly those led by women and young entrepreneurs.
However, Ofori-Mante stressed that financing remains the single biggest obstacle to the sector’s expansion.
Recent consultations with industry players, he noted, showed that demand for rice production is not the primary challenge. Instead, investors continue to face limited access to affordable long-term financing, inadequate aggregation systems and insufficient processing capacity.
To address those constraints, the AfDB is developing a proposed $200 million Agro-Input Risk Sharing Facility, aimed at using blended finance mechanisms to unlock lending for agricultural input suppliers and encourage greater private sector participation.
The initiative forms part of a broader financing strategy under the New African Financial Architecture for Development, championed by newly elected AfDB President Sidi Ould Tah.
Endorsed by the African Union earlier this year, the framework seeks to narrow Africa’s financing gap by mobilising domestic savings, expanding guarantee mechanisms and strengthening local capital markets to finance development priorities.
For Ofori-Mante, the shift signals a departure from traditional aid-dependent models.
“Africa’s agricultural transformation cannot be financed through traditional development assistance alone,” he said. “We must mobilise private capital at scale and build long-term African financing ecosystems.”
He identified five priorities for West Africa’s rice transformation agenda: expanding irrigation infrastructure, improving mechanisation and productivity, investing in aggregation and processing facilities, deploying blended finance instruments and strengthening regional market integration.
The AfDB official also highlighted the role of young people in the sector’s future, arguing that opportunities in mechanisation, digital agriculture, logistics, irrigation and agribusiness could help convert Africa’s demographic growth into a powerful economic advantage. For West Africa, the numbers tell the story clearly.
A region importing nearly 12 million metric tonnes of rice every year is not only importing food. It is exporting jobs, foreign exchange and industrial opportunity.
The challenge now is to turn rice from an import burden into a regional value chain capable of supporting farmers, processors, transporters, input suppliers, financiers and exporters.
As governments, development partners and investors gathered in Accra, the message from the bank was clear: the era of strategy formulation is largely over. The next challenge is execution.
“If we align policy, investment and capital around implementation,” Ofori-Mante said, “West Africa can transform itself from a major rice-importing region into a globally competitive hub for rice production and agro-industrialisation.”
