The meeting was to brief Dr Arthur on outcomes of a National Dialogue on the "Decentralisation of the Agricultural Sector", held in Tamale, Northern Region, on April 16.

The delegation included representatives from the FTF Market Systems and Resilience (MSR) Activity and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA).

The findings, presented at the dialogue, identified challenges such as inadequate funding for agricultural activities, low staffing, inadequate operational logistics, poor coordination, monitoring and reporting on activities.

These challenges, according to stakeholders, "require immediate intervention to strengthen the agricultural sector." Feed the Future (FTF) Ghana Policy LINK Activity is a five-year project supporting the Government of Ghana (GoG) and policy actors as they implement "evidence-based, inclusive development processes" to improve agriculture and food security systems.

Mr. Samson Konlan, Policy Advisor and MSR Objective 4 Team Lead, described the processes, which led to the National Dialogue.

The discussions, he explained, included "an assessment on strengthening decentralisation for effective agricultural sector policy implementation and coordination."

It also entailed "validation of findings from the assessment by key stakeholders at the decentralised and national levels."

The validation of the findings include representatives from the Local Government Service (LGS), Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGDRD), Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), National Development Planning Commission NDPC).

The rest are Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC) including Regional and District Directorates of Agriculture and other Metropolitan, and Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs).

Some areas proposed for consideration by the OHLGS included strengthening capacity of staff in the sector to develop "operational manuals" to provide a clear framework for the sector."

Dr Nana Ato Arthur, Head of Local Government Service
According to officials, the next step of dialogue "is to develop a technical working group" that will include various MDAs to develop "terms of reference, and prioritise the recommendations from the national dialogue."

Policy LINK and MSR, presented a report from the National Dialogue to Dr Arthur, saying they would "support implementation of the recommendations through the leadership of the MDAs."

Dr Arthur commended the team for the effort and expressed LGS commitment to providing the needed technical support to strengthen the agricultural sector.
He urged Metropolitan, Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs) to ensure that funds allocated for capacity building programmes were used for the intended purposes.

Present at the meeting were Human Resource Director of the OHLGS, Mr. Peter Essiem Asante, Technical Advisor on the Ghana Secondary Cities Support Programmes (GSCSP) at the OHLGS, Mrs.

Lena Otoo, Deputy Director, Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (PPMED) from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Mrs. Ruby Neils-Palme.
The rest were: Policy LINK Collaborating Learning, Adapting, Monitoring and Evaluation (CLAME) Lead,
Mr. Seidu Abu, the USAID Embedded Advisor to MOFA, Mrs. Angela Dannson, and, the Programme Lead of Policy LINK, Mrs. Annie Dela Akanko.