The DAGI, when finalised is intended to be an independent tool for promoting social accountability across the 28 districts of the NGGA located in the Upper West, Upper East and the Northern Regions.

Mr Thomas Ayamga, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for the NGGA said at a multi-stakeholder consultation workshop in Wa that the objective of the DAGI was to increase social accountability, which would lead to improved and responsive agricultural development for the country’s population.

He noted that DAGI stipulated to do this by opening up space for dialogue between the state and the population through the provision and tracking of essential information on agriculture and other wellbeing indices at the district level.

Mr Ayamga noted that the index aimed to deepen decentralisation and local capacity of institutions to respond to citizen’s needs and to support central and local government to better understand progress in agriculture sector development.It is also focused at increasing transparency of information on agriculture development at the district level and help raise the populace’s awareness and to support debate and dialogue on accountability and development progress as well as to increase state prioritisation and responsiveness for the agricultural sector.

Mr Ayamga said it was expected that through the use of DAGI’s results, citizens would become increasingly involved and empowered to understand how development was progressing in the agriculture sector. It is also expected that the Government and other stakeholders at the national, regional and district levels would be empowered to use the results to identify gaps in development, target support better and monitor progress year on year.

Mr Malik Gbana, the Regional Officer of the NGGA Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, who gave the overview of the NGGA said it was a USAID co-operative agreement for five years (2016-2021). He said the project covered 28 districts out of which 15 were in the Northern Region, seven in the Upper East Region and six in the Upper West Region.

He said it was being implemented by a consortium of NGOs led by Care International in Ghana and partnered by ActionAid Ghana, SEND Ghana and the West Africa Network for Peace-building Ghana.

Mr Gbana said the main goal of NGGA was to strengthen responsive governance for improved agricultural development in northern Ghana. Mr Kingsley Boahene, the Acting Chief Director of the Regional Co-ordinating Council affirmed that the project goal would increase capacity of decentralised structures in agriculture at the regional and district levels, improve accountability, build common consensus and strengthen civil society groups for better service delivery.