$103.55 million for Northern rural programme

Kintampo (B/A), June 17, GNA - Government have secured a total of 103.55 million US Dollars from the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and the African Development Fund (AFDB) to implement the Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP).

The eight year programme would benefit all rural areas in the three Northern regions, and Tain Kintampo North, Kintampo South, Pru and Sene districts of Brong-Ahafo. The NRGP is highly demand-driven and private sector-led and adopts a value chain approach for developing agriculture in Northern Ghana.

About 45,000 households would directly benefit from a comprehensive intervention, which would include strengthening of producer organisations, infrastructure improvements such as roads and irrigation schemes and increase access to agricultural production, processing and marketing funding.

Launching the programme at Kintampo on Tuesday, Mr Eric Opoku, Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, explained that food was becoming scarce globally and that government was committed to ensure national food security.

He said it was against this background that the government secured the fund from its development partners to enable farmers to increase productivity.

Mr Opoku said the programme in addition would help improve market linkages with the domestic and export markets for agricultural production and appealed to the beneficiaries to cooperate with the implementers to make it a success.

Mr Roy Ayariga, National Programme Coordinator noted that a strong linkage between commerce, industry and agriculture was the key to poverty reduction and wealth creation especially among the rural poor in Ghana.

"Farmers get poorer when the cost of production far exceeds the revenue from their produce mainly due to poor market access", he stressed.

Mr Ayariga explained that with the rising global food crisis, local producers were now in advantage position. He noted that the impact of climate change had brought untold difficulties for the Northern Savannah indicating that "Northern Savannah requires human-centred structural transformation to propel profitable agric business leading to poverty reduction, increase in rural incomes and ultimately improved quality of life". Mr Ayariga explained that IFAD formulated the programme in 2006 and after appraising it in July 2007, government requested AFDB to co-finance with IFAD so as to achieve wider geographical coverage. "NRGP is consistent with Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRSII) and the Food and Agric Sector Development Policy II which now constitute the framework for donors support to the development of the agric sector, Mr Ayariga explained. 17 June 09