The African Development Bank Group has approved a $211.4 million financing package to boost agricultural production and create thousands of jobs in eastern Angola.
The Eastern Region Agricultural Value Chain Development Project aims to transform the area into a major food hub for Angola and neighbouring countries, leveraging its strategic position along the Lobito Corridor economic zone.
The project will create 7,500 direct jobs—at least half of them for women and one-third for young people—and benefit 1.2 million people across six provinces: Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Moxico, Moxico Leste, Cuando, and Cubango.
The project brings together multiple funding sources in an innovative partnership. The African Development Bank is providing a loan of $190.4 million, complemented by $20 million from the Rome Process/Mattei Plan Financing Facility and a $1 million grant from the Transition Support Facility Pillar IV.
"This transformative project represents a key to turning the Lobito corridor from a logistic infrastructure into a development catalyst, leveraging the infrastructure for food production and processing," said Pietro Toigo, African Development Bank’s Country manager for Angola and Sao Tome’e Principe. "By combining cutting-edge technology, climate-smart infrastructure, and youth empowerment, we're not just investing in agriculture — we're investing in Angola's future prosperity and food sovereignty."
Angola currently imports food worth billions of dollars annually, despite having 35 million hectares of arable land, of which only 17 percent is under cultivation. The eastern region, blessed with abundant water resources and favourable agro-ecological conditions, has remained largely underdeveloped due to decades of conflict and limited investment.
The support will tackle these challenges through three strategic components designed to build a resilient and productive agricultural sector that serves both domestic food security needs and export markets.
The first component focuses on dramatically increasing agricultural output by deploying climate-resilient, high-yielding seed varieties through Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT). The project will rehabilitate 2,500 hectares of climate-proof irrigation systems and develop an additional 150,000 hectares of farmland, opening vast new areas for cultivation, with a focus on cereal and rice production. To ensure knowledge transfer and adoption of best practices, 3,000 Farmer Field Schools will be established across the six provinces, creating hands-on learning environments for smallholder farmers.
Six agribusiness centers will be established to serve as hubs for entrepreneurship, value addition, and skills development, particularly targeting women and youth.
The project will rehabilitate 400 km of climate-resilient feeder roads, connecting farming communities to markets, processing centres, and critically, to the Lobito Corridor Economic Zone.
A groundbreaking partnership with the African Fertilizer Financing Mechanism will revolutionize fertilizer access through a Partial Credit Guarantee scheme, facilitating the delivery of 360,000 metric tons of fertilizer over the project period —a dramatic increase from the current usage of just 7.9 kg per hectare.
The component also prioritizes youth economic empowerment through comprehensive skills development in agribusiness, mechanization, value addition, food processing, and agricultural entrepreneurship. Six mechanization facility centers will be equipped with tools and machines to provide affordable mechanization services to 900,000 farmers, with half of the beneficiaries being women.
"This project is a catalyst for inclusive growth," said Neeraj Vij, Regional Sector Manager at the African Development Bank Group. "By deliberately targeting women and youth, we're ensuring that economic transformation reaches those who need it most. We're not just creating jobs, we're creating opportunities for wealth creation, social mobility, and community empowerment."
Lobito Corridor Integration
Four of the six target provinces—Moxico, Moxico East, Cuando, and Cubango—fall within the Lobito Corridor Economic Zone, a regional integration initiative connecting Angola to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, with ultimate access to Indian Ocean ports. This strategic positioning transforms the project from a domestic food security intervention into a potential game-changer for regional agricultural trade. Angola's eastern provinces can emerge as major suppliers to southern African markets.
The project will be implemented over five years, from 2026 to 2031, by Angola's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. This operation represents the inaugural partnership between the Bank and the Government of Italy around the Lobito corridor, with the operation benefiting from a co-financing of EUR 20 million from the Rome Process Financing Facility – Piano Mattei.
The Government of Angola is contributing $100 million in parallel financing, including subsidies for land preparation, in-kind contributions of office space and staff salaries for field technicians and extension workers, and leveraging existing credit lines through commercial banks and government financing institutions.
Source: AFDB