The Malagasy agricultural sector forms the backbone of society and the economy, yet the nation faces a growing challenge: food insecurity. Since 2018, this issue has escalated, exacerbated by the inflationary effects of the COVID-19 crisis. The situation worsened further due to an extreme drought in the South during 2021 and 2022, coupled with particularly severe cyclonic events. These compounded crises have left Madagascar grappling with an urgent need to address its food security and agricultural resilience.
In this context, since 2022, the Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) has been supporting the Malagasy government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MINAE), in its efforts to mitigate, transfer, and adapt to agricultural risks. After conducting an agricultural risk assessment study in the maize and peanut value chains, PARM assisted the country in developing the Agricultural Risk Management for Inclusive Growth and Resilience (GRACIR) project in 2023. The project was formally approved at a cabinet meeting in 2024 as one of the Malagasy government’s priority projects. On 27 February 2025, the GRACIR components and financing structure were officially presented to donors and technical and financial partners during a round table organized by PARM, MINAE, and the Ministry of Finance in Antananarivo.
Enhancing Agricultural Risk Management for Inclusive Growth and Resilience in Madagascar
Estimated at approximately US$110 million, the GRACIR project aims to combat poverty and food and nutritional insecurity in rural areas of Madagascar. It also seeks to catalyse the growth potential of strategic crop value chains in the country by reducing risks, thereby attracting long-term public and private investments in the agricultural sector and increasing the resilience of stakeholders to a wide variety of risks and shocks.
GRACIR is structured around three key components: (i) access to production factors and food sovereignty through more efficient seed supply, strategic stocks of inputs (seeds, fertilizers), and the promotion of agroecological practices; (ii) securing outlets and strengthening value chain competitiveness by supporting the emergence of a competitive private sector, aggregation, development of economic services for risk management, and establishing a leverage fund for value chain structuring; and (iii) establishing a favourable investment environment through developing information services, capacity building, and structuring farmers’ organizations, along with establishing an agricultural risk management platform that includes a risk anticipation unit.
The project will benefit 300,000 households, totalling approximately 1,500,000 beneficiaries, including 40% women and 45% youth. The primary targets are smallholder farmers, encompassing poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged rural households involved in the selected value chains, as well as micro-entrepreneurs, emerging farmers, and farmers’ organizations in the western, central and southern regions.
Read the full project report [available in French only]
Photo Gallery: Donor Round Table
