By- Prosper Agbenyega- The Moment

The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding[MOU] worth Sixty Two Thousand One Hundred and Ten Ghana Cedis (62,110) with the Faculty of Natural Resources of the University of Development Studies (UDS) for the latter to undertake specific audits.

Under the contract, UDS would conduct a survey and audit on the total number of trees planted by ACI Construction through the SADA afforestation project which began in June 2012. With the quality of expertise and the aid of the GPRS devices, a draft report on the auditing is expected to be ready within two months.

The exercise when completed is expected to update SADA and the general public the actual number of trees planted by ACI construction.

The agreement was signed by Pro. Ernest OpokuSarpong, Dean of Faculty of Natural Resources, Nyankpala campus and Alhaji Gilbert Iddi, Chief Executive Officer of SADA. ACI/SADA afforestation is a three-tier partnership project between SADA, the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies’ MMDAs] with ACI Construction and Restoration as the implementations agency. According to our source, with the aim of equipping students with more knowledge on afforestation which would be boosted by this auditing project, a validation workshop would be organized to justify the credibility of the work done.

SADA in June 2012 signed a contract with ACI construction to plant and nature 5 million trees seedlings.

In another development, a visit to the SADA afforestation sitein the upper East Region by our news team has revealed potential success stories similar to the other Regions.

Most trees in the area are measured beyond the waist level with some measuring beyond five feet, except the mahogany trees which are naturally slow in growth and take between four to five years.

The rest, tick trees, ceiba, moringa and dawadawa are responsible to fast growth.

Most workers at the sites have taken advantage to practice mixed cropping. In the Upper East Region for instance, maize could be seen growing alongside the trees.

ACI afforestation covers all the SADA zones but is narrowed to 4 zones, namely Northern, Southern, Western and Central zones.