The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) has forged a partnership with Journalists to broaden their understanding on the law that established SADA and its mandate, its achievements and how it intends to work with the media to ensure smooth implementation of its agenda.

The event, which was organized by the Private Journalists Association of Ghana (PJA), and sponsored by SADA, attracted both the private and state owned media practitioners from the Northern, Upper East, northern parts of Brong Ahafo and Volta Regions.

The President of the PJA, Mr. Edmond Gyebi, explained that the meeting was to provide an opportunity for the participants to gain a better understanding of how they could utilize their unique positions as agenda setters to strategically and consistently give balanced and accurate reportage on the activities of SADA.

“We in the media must play our expected roles and also own SADA together with the very people we represent in this Zone. We should know that whatever we do is not just for SADA, but for our own people,” he stressed.

Reverend Abdallah Kassim, the Executive Director of Rural Media Network (RUMNET), who took the participants through “Developmental Journalism,” urged the journalists to help SADA to achieve its aims by holding SADA accountable and placing high demand on transparency instead of helping to kill the vision of SADA with negative publications.

“As media practitioners working in the Northern Ecological Zone, you owe it a duty to ensure that SADA succeed by highlighting more of the opportunities in the Zones for investors to invest in, as well as the positive sides of SADA including the opportunities that exist under SADA for the people in the area to access.”

Mr Charles Abugre, the Chief Executive Officer of SADA, who schooled the participants on the vision and mission of SADA, said notwithstanding the fact that SADA had been attacked in the past; it has made some significant gains in the area of the Agricultural Support Component, where prices of some foodstuff such as maize became stabilized and affordable for people.

He said the new crop of leadership had already begun re-engineering SADA, and cited holding of a donor conference and investment forum, and the increase in participation in the implementation process of SADA by majority of stakeholders such as parliamentarians, traditional rulers, district assemblies and civil society organizations among others as examples.

The CEO stated that the SADA Zone abounds in natural resources such as gold, lime, rocks, solar energy and vast tracks of agricultural land among others, and gave the assurance that the Authority was coordinating and facilitating to see how these resources could be tapped to fast track the development of the area.