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The European Union, with a financial grant from the French government, through its Agence Francaise de Development (AFD), is to launch a project known as Boost Ecological Transition Towards Enhanced Revenue (BETTER) in northern Ghana.
The main objective of the project is to ensure the sustainable management of the environment through smart agriculture and climate resilience.
The €19 million project would run for four and a half years and would be implemented in all five regions of northern Ghana, namely: Upper West, Upper East, North, North-East and Savannah regions.
Ninety communities in nine districts in the beneficiary regions are expected to benefit from this project.
The objective of the project is to develop the value chains of the targeted crops, which are shea, soybean and vegetables, as well as beekeeping, using agroecological and agroforestry practices.
Speaking at a meeting of partners of the project in Wa, the Minister for Food and Agriculture, Eric Opoku, said the project was in tandem with the government’s Feed Ghana flagship programme.
The partners were the Country Director of AFD, Clementine Dardy; the French Ambassador to Ghana, Jules-Armand Aniambossou; the Regional and District Directors of Agric, Ghana Irrigation Development Authority and the Tree Crops Development Authority.
Mr Opoku said the project would also improve the incomes of women and vulnerable groups by enhancing processing and market access.
In all, he said about 45,000 farmers are expected to benefit from the project, which would help to preserve and increase the availability and quality of shea resources.
Out of the targeted beneficiaries, he said 40 per cent would be women and youth and said all the actors in the four selected values “would be supported with production, processing and storage inputs to enhance productivity.”
The Country Director of AFD, Clémentine Dardy, said for more than 40 years now, the AFD has shifted its focus to rural development of agriculture as “we know agriculture is not just a way of life. It is the key to transformation.”
She said it was in this vein that the AFD was supporting the ongoing Agricultural Water Management Project (AWMP), to make water available to farmers to increase their income and livelihoods.
Under the AWMP, she said about 1,000 hectares of land would be irrigated through the provision of 15 dams and the drilling of about 30 boreholes.
She said the AWMP had targeted about 6,000 beneficiaries and it is being implemented in three regions: Upper West, Savannah and North East.
She said the BETTER Project would complement the AWMP to improve the welfare of farmers in northern Ghana and also help in sustaining the environment.
AWMP forms part of the activities under the European Union Ghana Agriculture Programme (EUGAP). It is a €47 million project cofounded by the French Government and it is being implemented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
The French Ambassador to Ghana, Jules-Armand Aniambossou, expressed his appreciation to all the partners for their collaboration in ensuring a successful implementation of the two projects.
He said the region has the potential to become the food basket of the sub-region and was hopeful that the farmers would take advantage of the intervention to improve their farming practices to become successful.
