November 28, 2016
MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN Group Crédit Agricole du Maroc AND Bank OF agriculture LIMITED (boa)- Nigeria
This Memorandum of Understanding (herein referred to as “MoU”) is made
Between:
Group Crédit Agricole du Maroc (GCAM)
and
Bank of Agriculture Limited (BOA)- Nigeria
Hereinafter referred to collectively as « the Parties »
Acknowledging the fact that African agriculture faces many problems shared by majority of African countries, such as the land tenure issue, low agricultural productivity and incomes, weak farmers’ organization, as well as insufficient level of agricultural products processing;
Aware of the fundamental role of South-South cooperation in facing these challenges and building ambitious development paths through mutual exchange of know-how and expertise;
And in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding between the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco and the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on an integrated project to support smallholder farmers in Nigeria;
The Parties agree on the following:
ARTICLE 1 – PURPOSE
The signing parties hereby express their willingness to cooperate together in a formal way in order to promote productive investments in agriculture and development of agricultural and agro-industrial chains in their respective countries, on the one hand, and to encourage smallholder agriculture and support the development of rural areas, on the other hand.
The Parties agree that the main purpose of this MoU is the balanced and inclusive development of agriculture in their respective countries through the promotion of financing and support systems, especially for smallholder agriculture.
ARTICLE 2 – OBJECTIVES
In order to achieve the main purpose of this MoU, the Parties shall support activities and projects aiming at the exchange of know-how in the following areas:
- Promoting an integrated, inclusive and participatory approach based on a comprehensive financing system through the segmentation of farms in order to tackle the actual and changing needs of the entire target population,
- Developing financial engineering, i.e. the conception and commercialization of financing products and services through an approach that takes into consideration the precise knowledge of economic and technical characteristics for each agricultural chain therefore meeting the needs of the whole value chain
- Exchanging on support functions particularly the agricultural risk analysis and management
- Exchanging on non-financial support for small farmers in terms of financial education, technical and management capacity building, adaptation to climate change, etc.