20 Jun 2005
NAIROBI, 20 June (IRIN) - The European Commission (EC) has awarded Somalia two grants worth a total of €20 million (US $24.6 million) to fight rural poverty and strengthen the development of water and sanitation services, the EC Somalia operations office announced on Friday.
"Assistance to Somalia supports food security and rural development interventions which contribute to poverty reduction in rural areas where 66 percent of all Somalis live," the Kenya-based office said in a statement.
The EC has awarded seven grants, totalling €10 million ($12.3 million), to international NGOs to assist Somalia's rural poor.
CARE and VETAID would target 35,000 drought-affected pastoralists in the northeast, while CEFA, an Italian NGO, and Save the Children – UK will target 5,400 vulnerable farmers in the Hiraan and Middle Shabelle regions of central Somalia.
An education project sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) would train 63,000 livestock-dependent households in animal breeding and care, natural-resource management, marketing and product diversification.
The BBC would also air radio programmes on those topics to reach about five million listeners.
At a country level, Terra Nuova would consolidate achievements by the Somali PACE programme towards improved animal-health services for domestic and export trade, while a complimentary activity would benefit roughly 3,300 public- and private-sector service providers, administrators, brokers, traders, exporters and veterinary professionals.
The commission said all implementing partners had extensive experience in Somalia and in the rural-poverty sector and had provided substantial co-financing to the EC grants.
The EC said another four contracts, part of the European Development Fund and worth €10 million ($12.3 million), are expected to improve access to urban and rural water and sanitation facilities for more than 425,000 people in Somalia over the next three years.
"Against the backdrop of an arid to semi-arid climate, livelihoods of the Somali people were frequently affected by extreme climatic events.
"With an estimated annual renewable fresh water resource of less than 1,000m³/person/year, Somalia is considered to be water scarce," the EC said.
The EC said three of the projects - representing an estimated €6 million ($7.4 million) and set to be implemented by CEFA, the German Red Cross and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) - would focus on water access in rural areas.
A fourth intervention, worth €4 million ($4.9 million), would be implemented by UNICEF to provide clean, piped water and solid waste collection to thousands of Somalis across the Horn of Africa country.