Devt Dialogue on poverty reduction opens in Tamale

Tamale, Oct. 20, GNA - A development practitioner has noted that unless the country settles the ownership of development it cannot make any sustainable impact on community development through livelihood improvement and poverty reduction.
Mr Samuel Zan, Director of SEND Foundation of West Africa, an international NGO, said: "Ownership is fundamental to people's engagement in the development process. It defines people's level of participation and commitment".
He was speaking on development and poverty reduction perspective at a workshop on: "Development Dialogue" in Tamale on Monday. The workshop is on the theme: "Decentralising the Poverty Reduction Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities for strengthening Partnerships between Government, Civil Society and Donors"
The Institute for Policy Alternatives (IPA), a Tamale-based private think tank is hosting the three-day forum, which is sponsored by the World Bank (Ghana Office), DANIDA, CIDA, German Technical Assistance Agency (GTZ), Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA) and Centre for Democratic Development (CDD).
Mr Zan said: "There is no group of people anywhere who are too ignorant or uninformed to understand ownership and engagement. "Development partners, including the government, donors and NGOs need to change their assumptions and strategies to be more respectful and open to the rural poor to able to effectively engage with them for development and poverty reduction.
"Let us do this, very mindful that by increasing their ownership for development, we empower them and by empowering them, our own influence and power will diminish", he said.
Mr Zan noted that this balancing of the power relationship between the community on one hand and the other development actors "is the real challenge now for any meaningful development to take place in the country".
Mrs Nadia Ibrahimah, Secretary of the Northern Regional Branch of the TUC, said the greatest challenge was integrating the poor into poverty reduction programmes and viewing infrastructure under such programmes as tools for wealth creation. Mrs Ibrahimah observed that food is very important to the eradication of poverty saying, "even, the developed countries still provide subsidy to their farmers, yet we are forbidden from subsidising our farmers".
"There is no way we can improve agriculture without assisting the farmers the majority of whom are among the poor of this country", she said.
On social factor, growth and poverty reduction, Mrs Ibrahimah said: "There is social element in governance that no country can relinquish to the background", adding that the government has a social obligation to the people.
She said: It appears to me, however, that services under the poverty reduction programmes are paid for at commercial rates. I know that funds for poverty are not given gratis; but let me say that poverty reduction can only be human and nothing else".