Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said countries in the West African sub region can do better economically if they put their energies together.
He has therefore called for stronger integration among the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) markets in order to build the necessary resilience of their economies and food security in the sub region.
The Vice President was speaking at an international conference on West African Food Security Storage System in Accra yesterday.
The meeting which started from Wednesday, April 28 to Monday, May 10 attracted Ministers in charge of Agriculture, Environment and Water Resources from the 15 West African countries as well as donor partners to deliberate on measures to achieve regional food security.
It was put together by the Economic Community of West African Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP) Donor Group, with the key objective of implementing the agricultural component of NEPAD in West Africa.
The meeting called for an action to share country experiences, knowledge and building of consensus on the way forward to build strategic stock reserves in the sub-region.
“Our plan to build a strategic food storage system for the sub region is a step in the right direction towards addressing the dire situation of emerging hunger facing our people,” the Vice President said, adding “in order to operationalize our objective, there is an urgent need for marching resources and financing mechanism.”
He said the meeting was a giant step in the ECOWAS’ quest to provide food security especially for the vulnerable and a good sign of being responsive to the needs of the people, saying “in a short to medium term goal was to build capacity of the sub region and insulate our system from external shocks and attain self-sufficiency.”
He noted that the meeting was in tandem with the government of Ghana’s effort at revamping agriculture and harnessing the potential to the fullest.
“We are therefore in full support of the sub-regional effort to build strategic stocks of food reservers and to ensure food security in the sub region,” Dr. Bawumia emphasised.
“For us in Ghana, the purpose of this conference vindicates our government’s transformation agenda rolled out in 2017 for the agricultural sector. The agenda is a product of a comprehensive diagnosis of the agricultural sector. The vehicle for delivering the agenda is government’s flagship programme known as Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ). The key focus of the programme is to enhance productivity, scale up production of food commodities, promote value addition and build sustainable food security for the country,” he stated.
He said, Ghana had invested consistently and progressively through many complementary interventions including annual distribution of subsidized farm inputs, certified seeds and fertilizers to farmers.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu