Global Media Foundation disappointed over SADA project

Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, Chief Executive Officer of Global Media Foundation (GLOMEF), an anti-corruption Non-governmental organization on Friday expressed disappointment over the implementation of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) project.

He observed that the project was the best poverty alleviating strategy intervention of the government, which when well-coordinated and implemented had the potential to facilitate accelerated development in the northern parts of the country.

Mr Ahenu in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani expressed worry that management of the project had failed the deprived people in the northern part of the country, government, as well as donor and development partners.

He said the idea and content of the project required effective partnership and involvement of civil society organizations in helping to identify and provide opportunities for the rural poor, especially women in the north to go into commercial production of cash crops and other economic trees.

Mr Ahenu said the livelihood and economic situation of the local people in the project implementing areas, was still worsening, adding that the fragile eco-system in the North had not seen any improvement.

He explained that the educational, agricultural and health sectors of the project implementing areas were still deplorable and called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, dissolve the management of SADA and investigate alleged financial misappropriations of the project.

SADA was established by the government in 2012 as an independent body for coordinating a comprehensive development agenda for the Northern Savanna ecological zone.

Its operations target improving education, health and agriculture in the Upper East, Upper West, and Northern Regions, as well as parts of Brong-Ahafo and Volta regions.