Govt to Establish Shea Devt Board By End of 2024

By Julius Yao Petetsi

A DEPUTY Minister of Food and Agriculture, Kennedy Osei Nyarko, has said that the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) was implementing a roadmap for the establishment of a Shea Development Board by the end of year 2024.

The roadmap, Mr Nyarko said, include graduating the Shea Unit at the COCOBOD into a subsidiary status by end of 2019 as a semi-autonomous institution before converting it into a Board by 2024 after a self-funding scheme would have been put in place.

Mr Osei, MP, Akim Swedru, said this in an answer to a parliamentary question asked by the Tamale North MP, Alhassan Suhuyini, as to what the state of work was on the transition of the unit into a board in Parliament yesterday.

"Mr Speaker, the first stage (of upgrading the Shea Unit at the COCOBOD into a Shea Development Board) has been completed.

"The Shea Unit has been created with an office in Accra and a National Steering Committee on Shea also established.

"The Shea Unit has opened a branch office in Tamale, and well on course to open another office in Wa in the Upper West Region," he said adding that an office in Bolgatanga would be given a thought.

The Shea Unit together with the National Steering Committee, he said, formulated a 15-year development strategy called 'The Shea Development Strategy (SHEDS 2014-2030)' which would serve as the blueprint for the implementation of programmes for the development of the shea sector.

"The document" he said "has gone through all necessary stakeholder engagements and the Board of Directors of COCOBOD will present the document through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to Cabinet in August 2018."

According to him, the core areas of the policy are research, extension, plantation development and conservation, strategic stakeholder partnership, product development, marketing and quality standards.

"After operating the Tamale office for a year, COCOBOD will move the head office of the Shea Unit to Tamale in 2019, to begin full operations as a subsidiary drawing on other sources of funding outside COCOBOD.

"The subsidiary will intensify the work of the Shea Unit in collaboration with stakeholders," he emphasized detailing promotion of Shea research, extension services, product development and marketing as some of the activities earmarked to develop the industry.

The subsidiary, the Akim Swedru legislator said, will generate revenue from its operations and by 2024 become adequately equipped to operate as a full-fledged Shea Development Board.

The roadmap, Nyarko said were formulated with inputs from relevant stakeholders in the shea value chain expressing the confidence that their implementation would lead to the successful revamping of the shea sub sector.

"Mr Speaker, the process of transforming the Shea Unit under COCOBOD into a Shea Development Board is well on course and very much in line with the President's vision of revamping the shea industry in Ghana to fulfill the agenda of diversifying the agriculture sector," he stated.

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