ESWATINI BENEFITS FROM E29BN FUND

MBABANE – One of the world’s major banks, European Investment Bank (EIB), takes pride in seeing its money utilised for intended projects in Eswatini.

In its latest report for Africa, Caribbean Pacific and Overseas countries and territories, the EIB credits the Eswatini Water and Agriculture Development Enterprise (ESWADE) for using loans secured from the bank to undertake agricultural projects. For the year under review, the European Investment Bank reported that it allocated E29.8 billion as loans for the region to embark on income generating projects. One of the main beneficiaries is Eswatini, the bank reported. The bank disclosed that it invested E682.20 million (at current foreign exchange rate) in the second phase of the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP).

The shareholders of the European Investment Bank are the 27 member states of the European Union. “The Bank is now investing €36 million (E682 million) in LUSIP’s second phase,” reads the report. Motivating its loan disbursement to the Kingdom, the European Investment Bank described Eswatini as one of Africa’s smaller countries that is geographically diverse with mountains, rainforest and savannah. It said a large proportion of the inhabitants of Eswatini, formerly Swaziland; make their living through difficult subsistence farming. Farmers in the Lowveld region of the country, which is both the driest and the poorest, are particularly challenged, said the financial institution.

Extending

To counteract this, EIB stated that ESWADE) was created by the country’s Ministry of Agriculture to help commercial agriculture and socio-economic development whereby managing water and extending irrigation is a huge part of the project. The EIB invested in the building of the Lubovane dam and reservoir, as part of the first phase of the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project (LUSIP). This reservoir stores the excess water from overruns of the Usuthu River, irrigating an extra 6 500 hectares of dry land and letting local farmers grow food year-round. It said the idea was to extend irrigation canals and water distribution networks to bring water to an additional 5 217 hectares of land. In addition to this, new pumping systems were expected to replace old ones, improving crop yields on an additional 533 hectares of farmland.

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