AfDB lauds Ghana as valuable partner

 The Executive Director at the African Develop­ment Bank (AfDB) for The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Sudan, Mr Rufus N. Darkotey, has underscored the importance of Ghana as a valuable partner of the bank.

He expressed the gratitude of the Bank’s President, Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, to Ghana for the level of cooperation to ensure the holistic development of Africa, with focus on food sovereignty, food self-sufficiency, food security, gender and youth vulnerability issues.

Mr Darkotey said this when he visited the Savannah Agriculture Value Chain Development Project (SADEP) in the north, last week, as part of his three-day consultation engagement in Ghana, during which he met with the Minister of Finance over the bank’s portfolio in Ghana and future priority areas.

Mr Darkotey also enumerated the bank’s projects in Ghana singling out the enormous work done in the transport sector with transformational projects including the Pokuasi Interchange, the terminal three expansion at the Kotoka International Airport, and work done in the energy sector.

In a welcome brief, Mrs Theresa Fynn, Ag. Project Coordinator of SADEP, narrated the design and implementation of the Savannah Zone Agriculture Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) which saw the introduction of large-scale commercial agriculture production of maize, soybean and rice.

Mrs Fynn said the sustained effort by the bank support through its Feed Africa Strategy, where subsequent projects such as the Savannah Investment Programme (SIP), the GAFSP support to SIP through to the SADEP, had been a game-changer in achieving outputs set out in the design of these projects.

Mr Abubakar Seidu, Project Officer of the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation in the Savannahs (TAAT-S) on his part, stressed on the need for improvement in future project designs to make use of knowledge materials produced by the bank as well as increasing funding “to be able to bring about meaningful change in Agriculture.”

“Through the TAAT-S, 4 commercial farmers, cultivating 87 ha of maize and soybean in 2018 grew to a current total of 454 commercial farmers cultivating 4,950 ha of soy, 33,050ha of maize making a total of 3,8000 ha under production.

These commercial farmers work with over 78,000 smallholder farmers with each having a holding of 3.6 ha. This translates into a contribution of 15.87 per cent increment in the production of Soy, 18.62 per cent increment in the production of Maize, 30.16 per cent increment in the production of Rice culminating in an overall 21.64 per cent contribution to the national production of maize, soy and rice,” he said.

During a visit to Cudjoe Abimash Farms in Mion District of the Northern Region, the owner of the farm, Alhaji Mashud Mohammed, the 2021 National Best Farmer, recounted that from a humble beginning of only four acres, and through the support of AfDB designed projects, he has grown into a full-blown commercial farmer cultivating over a 2,000 ha of maize, soybean and rice.

Mr Darkotey encouraged Alhaji Mohammed to do more by adopting modern technology such as the use of drones for monitoring, branding his enterprise, making it attractive and formalising it so that, he could expand further and open himself for even more direct funding support from the bank.

As part of his tour, Mr Darkotey and his team also interacted with smallholder farmers and visited the Agriculture Mechanisation Service Centre at Baglahi, a suburb of Tamale.

 BY TIMES REPORTER

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