Workshop underway to facilitate increased investment in agric

A three-day workshop with the objective of developing a road map aimed at increasing private sector investment in agriculture in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone has opened in Accra.

The workshop expects to identify and address constraints so that potential investment opportunities can be actualised. It has the theme: Accelerated transformation of the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone through agriculture.

Delegates include policy makers, development partners and private sector investors.

The programme is being organised by the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), in collaboration with USAID, the World Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands.

Economic reservoir 

In an address, read on his behalf, the Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper, described the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone as an unexploited economic reservoir.

For instance, he said the zone had about eight million hectares of arable agricultural land that could trigger economic transformation in the country and beyond.

‘’The agricultural lands are fertile enough to produce abundant granary such as rice, maize, millet and sorghum to feed the whole country and for export to the rest of the West African sub-region,’’ he said.

In addition, he said the area had the potential of producing all the tomatoes needed in the country.

“Producing the country’s needs in rice and tomato alone would mean a savings of $400 million annually and would contribute to lowering the pressure on the cedi,” he added.

On water availability, Mr Terkper said the zone, with at least 23 dam sites, also had the potential for irrigation, power generation and flood control.

He said inland fisheries, aquaculture and water transportation could also be undertaken in the northern zone, considering that the sources of the White Volta and the Black Volta and the Oti River basin were all located there. 

Challenges 

However, in spite of the abundance of resources in the zone, Mr Terkper noted that the area was confronted with challenges that had caused it to lag behind the rest of the country in some key socio-economic development indexes.

He mentioned some of the challenges as the lack of medium to long-term financing for farmers, poor infrastructure, including obsolete irrigation facilities, bad road networks to market centres, desertification brought about by climate change and inadequate skills for smallholder farmers.

Mr Terkper said while the government had made some inroads under the circumstances, there was still the need to unlock the area’s potential in order to enhance its development.

He, therefore, described the workshop as timely and in the right direction, as it was positioned to develop strategies and fashion a way forward to turn the fortunes of the northern savannah zone around.

Conclusions from the workshop, he added, should provide inputs for the SADA Master Planning Process and the National Development Planning Commission’s long-term national development framework. 

MoFA minister 

For his part, the Minister of Food and Agricultural, Alhaji Mohammed Minuru, said any effort to address poverty required bold and transformational improvement in the agriculture sector in the northern zone, since it was the mainstay of the economy of the people in the area. 

In separate statements, representatives of the development partners attending the workshop pledged to continue to support efforts to develop the northern savannah zone.