AFC Worldwide 2022
EDITORIAL
Dear partners and colleagues, Working in a pandemic situation for two years now has been a challenge for all of us. In many countries, our offices as well as our partner structures were temporarily not or only partially operational. Nevertheless, our project implementation in 55 countries continued and contracting partners tendered new projects. The GOPA Group held its first GOPA Group Day in a successful hybrid format. We thank our partners and colleagues for their constructive cooperation under the special conditions! The new government in Germany will draw attention to organic agriculture, climate-adjusted production systems and intelligent ICT applications. Reliability, certification and improvement of national and international supply chains became important topics. In all these subjects, AFC relies on strong experiences gained in the last decades. We stay flexible and constantly adapt our working strategies to the new realities. In this context, we developed an online course on agricultural finance. Our team is more than willing to improve our services in agriculture and financial sector development permanently. In recent years, projects implemented under BMZ’s SEWOH focusing on income generation along agricultural value chains and supporting agricultural finance systems were essential for us. Our main activities in this respect took place in Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and India. We appreciate that an adjusted programme of BMZ/GIZ will continue under “One World without Hunger” (EWOH). Green, Gender and Digital Finance are emerging topics in which we assist financial institutions to tailor their products and services and thus reducing inequality and enhancing financial inclusion for example in Nigeria (AFI) and Ethiopia (GIZ) or raising awareness on climate risks in Armenia (KfW). Central Asia, where we are currently implementing nine projects on behalf of BMEL, GIZ, KFW and WB, has always been an important region for AFC. Counting three ongoing projects, Uzbekistan became a new focus for us. In this edition, we present a selection of our projects – some of them recently started such as in Ghana (GIZ/EU) and Egypt (BMEL), some ended such as in Niger (EU). In our headquarters in Bonn, we reduced our carbon footprint and are proud to be certified as a climate-neutral company since 2021, which is very much appreciated by our team. Enjoy reading this edition in electronic form or climate-neutrally printed on FSC-certified paper! Please share your views with our authors and follow us on LinkedIn for future frequent exchange.
Thank you!
Johannes Buschmeier Managing Director / CEO
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