All the 216 districts of the ten regions under the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) will benefit from the five-year programme which is being supported with funding from the Canadian Government to ensure more modern, equitable and sustainable agriculture sector.

 Other areas of priority attention would include support to the Regions for technical oversight and value-chain development, support to the Ministry of Agriculture directorates at the National level and support to Agriculture Colleges and Research Institutes.

 It has therefore intensified training for all agriculture stakeholders including district agriculture directors, accountant, district chief executives, coordinating directors as well as district finance officers to sensitise them on their respective roles to facilitate the efficient implementation of the programme.

Ms. Prospera Anku, Deputy Director in Charge of Public Extension at MoFA, in a presentation charged the all stakeholders of the various district assemblies to be conversant with the extension policies to enable them play their roles effectively to ensure the success of the programme.

She said the national office could allude to the fact that the training of technical officers to undertake extension services was dying and the programme was to address that anomaly as part of the processes to redeem the sector.

Technical review services should therefore be a matter of great priority and must be included in the plans of the districts because they will receive incentives when well implemented but sanctions if they failed to do. Of great significance to be incorporated into the district plans were gender issues, climate change, HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases as well as child labour in order to carry out training programmes for staff, focal persons and farmers.

They must ensure enhanced administrative running of the offices, improve planning, budgeting and reporting, improve monitoring and supervision of extension services and management as well as the establishment and strengthening of farmer based organisations.

Ms. Anku charged the districts to ensure that the Planting for Food and Jobs project, which was the flagship programme of the Government, featured prominently in their work plans and budgets.

They should be that inclusiveness and participation of all stakeholders in the planning and implementation process to ensure ownership of the programme was key to its success, she added.

Ms. Ruby Neils-Palme , MAG Coordinator, emphasized the need to strengthen decentralized multi-stakeholder structures for planning, review and dialogue, to establish harmonization of plans and budgets in line with sector stakeholders at the decentralized level.

She enumerated some of the weaknesses in the preparation work plans in the 2017 and 2018 budgets to include lack of coherence within and among plans, unrealistic targets, lack of gender sensitivity and focus on production without value chain.

The workshop was to identify the lapses and have them corrected in the 2019 work plans and budgeting.