The United States, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is providing up to $20 million to the Grain from Ukraine initiative announced by President Vladimir Zelensky at the G20 Summit earlier this week to help feed people around the world, USAID said in a release Friday.
“USAID will provide support through the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to facilitate the delivery of additional shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” the release said.
The U.S. agency recalls that before Putin’s invasion, Ukraine was one of WFP’s largest grain suppliers and the fourth largest commercial exporter of wheat in the world.
Today’s announcement builds on WFP’s existing $173 million support to date to buy Ukrainian grain to feed people in countries facing the most severe food crises, including Ethiopia, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Thanks to U.S. funding, 210,000 tons of food was purchased, enough to feed an estimated 12.6 million people for one month.
All told, since the start of Putin’s war against Ukraine in February, the U.S. has provided more than $11 billion to combat the global food crisis, including nearly $8.6 billion in humanitarian aid, the release indicated.
According to it, USAID also continues to help Ukrainian farmers who risk their lives to feed the world through the Agricultural Sustainability Initiative-Ukraine (AGRI-Ukraine). The initiative focuses on four areas that are critical to supporting Ukraine’s agricultural exports and its contribution to global food security: providing critical resources for farmers; improving export logistics and infrastructure; improving farmers’ access to finance; and addressing the needs of drying, storing, and processing crops. USAID has invested $100 million in the initiative, and the agency seeks to raise at least $150 million in additional funding from other donors, foundations and the private sector.
Prime Minister Denis Shmygal says USAID will support the creation of processing plants in Ukraine starting next year.
“The government is interested in increasing added value, that’s why it already supports the creation of processing enterprises in mid-sized businesses through eRabotka grant programs. According to him, an agreement has been reached with USAID to support this direction from next year,” the government press service said referring to Shmygal.
The prime minister also noted that after the war Ukraine expects a significant inflow of capital.
“Much attention will be paid to projects of public-private partnership, concession and for Ukrainian business will have a key role in this strategy,” the statement said.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Samantha Power discussed the implementation of the Ukraine Fast Recovery Plan and the details of programs designed to develop a safe space in Ukraine, the website of the Ukrainian head of state reported.
“Today, our main goal is to prepare for winter, create decent living conditions for the population in the liberated territories, and restore critical infrastructure as soon as possible. There is a big and ambitious thing that will happen after the victory of Ukraine, but there is something that is needed now and where you can help us,” Zelensky emphasized during a conversation with the USAID administrator.
The president of Ukraine presented Samantha Power with the Order of Princess Olga of the first grade, which she was awarded for her significant contribution to the development of interstate cooperation and consistent and important support of our state.
Zelensky also thanked her for the agency’s allocation of $55 million to prepare Ukraine’s heating infrastructure for winter amid Russian aggression, and also praised the level of economic and defense support provided by the United States to Ukraine.
“It is extremely important for us to have such an ally as the United States, which is a real leader in consolidating international support for Ukraine,” the president of Ukraine said.
The US Agency for International Assistance (USAID) is launching a 5-year, $45 million project to strengthen Ukraine’s healthcare system, US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said.
“This assistance will include crisis response, mental health services and more in line with First Lady (Elena) Zelenska’s Mental Health Initiative,” Brink tweeted following a meeting with Health Minister Viktor Lyashko.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine also received a $1.7 billion grant from the United States through USAID to support the Medical Guarantee Program (SGP), in particular, to pay salaries to doctors.
According to the USAID website, the agency has provided $4 million in direct budget support to the government of Ukraine. These resources have helped the Ukrainian government continue to perform essential functions, such as providing gas and electricity to hospitals, schools and other critical infrastructure, supporting the delivery of humanitarian supplies citizens and continue to pay the salaries of civil servants and teachers. weiterhin wichtige Funktionen zu erfüllen, wie die Versorgung von Krankenhäusern, Schulen und anderen kritischen Infrastrukturen mit Gas und Strom. die Lieferung von humanitären Hilfsgütern an die Bürger zu unterstützen und weiterhin die Gehälter von Beamten und Lehrern zu zahlen.
The official presentation of the project “Governance and Local Accountability (Hoverla) Activity” with a budget of $74 million, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), took place in Kyiv.
“After the successful local elections in 2020, when Ukrainians elected representatives of their newly united regions and communities, now is the time to start a new phase in decentralization. Decentralization reform can ensure that all levels of Ukraine’s leadership represent the best modern democratic practices,” U.S. Charge d’Affaires in Ukraine Kristina Kvien said at the project presentation in Kyiv on Monday.
She said that one of the key next steps in decentralization is to adopt an amendment to the Ukrainian Constitution. “This is a long debated step and I encourage you all to work together to complete it,” Kvien said.
In turn, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed that for the irreversibility of the reform, it is important to introduce and consolidate in the Constitution of Ukraine the appropriate changes regarding a new model of local government, the territorial organization of power, built on the principles of decentralization and subsidiarity.
“Regarding the government’s action program in decentralization, I want to say that in order to complete the reform, the government is introducing a number of important measures to decentralize power and reform local government. Relevant bills for their implementation are already being developed,” he said.
According to the head of government, we are talking about the delineation of powers and the creation of appropriate material financial conditions for their implementation, reformatting local government administrations into prefectural-type agencies, improving the forms of inter-municipal cooperation as an effective mechanism for cooperation of territorial communities, introducing a new municipal service, improving the forms of attracting residents to making managerial decisions and determining the procedure for resolving issues of the administrative territorial structure.
“The government focuses on strengthening the institutional and financial capacity of communities and their development,” Shmyhal said. The prime minister said the pilot areas of the project have already been selected, Volyn, Lviv, Poltava, and also add there is a need to expand the geography of the project to other regions and other communities.
Chief of the Hoverla project Gabriel Abraham said the project has already identified the first 25 partner communities from Lviv, Poltava and Volyn regions.
“During the implementation of the project, Hoverla plans to use replicable models and mechanisms to increase support for two more communities with the involvement of partners, associations of local government, other civil society actors and government agencies,” he said.
Abraham said the project is designed for five years, until 2026. “The activities of Hoverla are based on three principal goals. The first goal is to support policies and laws. The second goal is to support local officials. The third goal is to support the interaction of citizens with their officials,” the project manager said.
USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (USAID Agro) and the National Association of Agricultural Advisory Services of Ukraine will create the online resource center “Best agricultural practices for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME)” to provide its participants with knowledge about modern agricultural technologies in a number of agricultural sectors.
USAID Agro wrote about the agreement signed on September 1 to create this online project on Facebook.
“The resource center will provide agricultural MSMEs with practical knowledge and an indicative base about modern agricultural technologies in Ukraine and the world that can be introduced in the horticultural sector, livestock, aquaculture, poultry (except for chickens), in the production of confectionery and craft products,” the report says.
The project will become a communication platform where successful farmers will share their achievements with their potential followers. For this, Internet technologies, social networks will be used, educational webinars, meetings, fairs and conferences will be held, the “Best agro-practices” bulletin will be published.
It is specified that state and local authorities, public organizations, associations, scientific organizations and agricultural journalists are invited to participate in the project.
The beneficiaries of the project will be farmers from all over Ukraine, in particular, the target areas of the USAID Agro project are Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Cherkasy regions.
“The resource center will give a new impetus to the development of agricultural consulting, in particular, for the cooperation of advisers with farmers, institutions of agricultural science and education, research and design institutes, associations,” the organization summed up.
The National Association of Agricultural Advisory Services of Ukraine is an association of agricultural advisers and advisory services promoting modern management and production technologies at the MSME level, as well as implementing a number of projects related to the application of modern approaches to agricultural production.
