BERLIN, June 17 (Xinhua) -- Germany would provide around 19 million euros (21.4 million U.S. dollars) for drought insurance by the African Risk Capacity (ARC) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) announced on Wednesday.
"We are helping millions of small farmers to get through the crisis," German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Mueller, told German newspaper Rheinische Post on Wednesday. In Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, farmers could now be insured against drought.
If rainfall was below a certain level, African farmers could use the funds to buy food for their families, seeds or feed for their livestock. Mueller stressed that even before the coronavirus pandemic, the food situation in many African countries had already been critical because of climate change.
In recent decades, a quarter of the world's agricultural lands had been rendered unusable by drought and desertification. "This endangers the livelihoods of three billion people," warned Mueller. Enditem