GASIP officials with stakeholders in Tamale
The Ghana Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (GASIP) has organized an official handing over workshop of the programmes interventions and key installations in Tamale in the Northern region.
The GASIP is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) with a loan facility of 36 million US Dollars and Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) grant of 10 million US Dollars.
The Programme has been implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture through the Programme Coordination Unit (PCU) to sustainably reduce rural poverty through increased profitability and climate change resilience of agribusinesses and smallholder farmers.
Deputy Minister for Food and Agriculture, Alhaji Hardi Tufeiru, indicated that the programme made some inventions across the country to enhance rice cultivation, as well as supported with farm machinery and equipment.
He noted that sustainability of interventions is very key for continuous excellence and accelerated development and indicated that GASIP, through a consultative and inclusive process, has developed a comprehensive exit and sustainability plan for the interventions.
The National Programme Coordinator, Klutse Kudomor, disclosed that the programme performance was achieved mainly by creating shared values and opportunities within rice, maize, soya, and vegetable value chains of the smallholder farmer.
“As you may be aware, the smallholder farmer produces more than 80 per cent of the staples produced and consumed in Ghana. Therefore, any investment in agricultural value chains dominated by the smallholder farmer will largely impact food security in Ghana,” he said.
Mr. Kudomor noted that some of the major achievements of GASIP include 800 FBOs trained in institutional and organizational development, 44,000 smallholder farmers have been trained in Good Agricultural Practices and Climate Smart technologies, 80 Value Chain Cluster businesses were developed and supported.
Others include programme outreach covered 160,000 smallholder farmers, out of which 36 per cent are women, 24,000 smallholder farmers have been connected to the Ghana Commodity Exchange, 12 Automatic Weather Stations were provided to farming communities for accurate weather information, 3,000 smallholder farmers are receiving daily weather information via SMS, 76 km of feeder road & farm tracks were constructed at 17 locations.
Northern Regional Director of Agriculture Hajia Hawa Musah, urged the Agric directors in the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDA’s) to continue to sustain the gains made by the programme.
She entreated stakeholders especially districts departments of Agric and the beneficiaries hosting the installations and equipments to ensure regular maintenance to enable the installations to continue to serve its purpose.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale