By Philip Tengzu
Sakalu, (UW/R), July 8, GNA – The Advisory Committee of the Land of Opportunity in the Sahel (LoGMe) project has visited the project sites in the Sissala East Municipality to assess the impact of the project interventions on the lives of the beneficiaries.
The sites visited were the dry-season garden project with a solar-powered mechanised water system, tree nursery and land restoration sites at Sakalu as well as a shea butter processing facility, bee farm, solar-powered water facility, tree nursery and land restoration sites at Nanchalla.
The LoGMe project also trained the beneficiaries, predominately women on energy-efficient cooking stoves and briquette charcoal production from clay and dry grasses respectively.
The Italian Ministry for Ecological Transitions funded the project through the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and implemented in Ghana, Burkina Faso and Niger by a consortium of organisations with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the lead implementing partner.
It was aimed to contribute towards meeting the land degradation neutrality targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Speaking at the project site at Sakalu, Madam Felicité Chabi-Gonni, the IUCN Regional Coordinator of the LoGMe Project, said the implementation employed different approaches in the three countries to achieve the maximum impact.
She said in each country they embarked on land restoration and supported women’s groups to obtain economic opportunities, including shea butter processing in Ghana and moringa processing in Niger among others.
She indicated that the project implementation was a participatory approach in the three countries, focusing on community needs.
Madam Chabi-Gonni said the community members had assumed responsibility for the project and set up mechanisms to ensure its sustainability and long-term benefit to the community.
Mr Gilles Amadou Ouedraogo, the UNCCD Programme Management Officer of the Global Mechanism, expressed happiness about the project’s outcome, including the income-generating activities for young people and women such as the beekeeping and shea butter processing.
He was enthused about the improved livelihood through the solar mechanised boreholes, knowledge of sustainable farming, and the women cooperatives the project had established.
“It’s a game-changer because, obviously, you have youth engaged, and if they’re able to sustain this process, you’ll have a long-term impact for the entire communities”, he explained.
Mrs Dorcas Owusuaa Agyei, the Ghana National Coordinator of IUCN, said the project had impacted 102,000 people in the communities with the beneficiary communities trained to raise seedlings for the land restoration when the project elapsed.
“What really touches our hearts is the impact it has made on the livelihoods of the communities, especially the women because the focus of the project was on women and youth”, Mrs Agyei stated.
Recounting the impact of the project, Mrs Agyei referenced a widow in one of the communities who said she, hitherto, could not cook anytime it was raining because she did not have an enclosed kitchen and she relied on fuel wood to cook.
She, however, said with the introduction of the mobile improved cooking stove by the project she could comfortably cook in her closet using the briquette charcoal even when it was raining.
Dr. Joachim Ayiiwe Abungba, the Head of the Black Volta Basin, said the project restored 9.9 hectares of land in the Sakalu community last year with 30 hectares of land earmarked to be restored this year out of which 500 trees had so far been planted.
He said the intervention was to help save the water bodies in the area as the excessive land degradation around the water bodies caused them to dry up early.
“This feeds directly into the national buffer zone policy of Ghana. That is what we are supposed to do as a country in protecting water bodies and protecting water catchments,” Dr. Abungba said.
At the Sakalu community, Madam Osman Fati, a beneficiary, said they were benefiting tremendously from the 2-hectarer fenced field and solar-powered borehole facility for dry season farming.
She said they were saving proceeds from the garden to procure additional water reservoirs for the garden to boost their dry-season farming.
Also, Madam Sahada Chanbua, a beneficiary at the Nanchalla community, said the bee farm and the shea butter processing facility were positively impacting her life.
She said the beneficiary women were making a living out of those economic activities and caring for the education and health of their children.
The project, called: “Creating Lands of Opportunity: Transforming Livelihoods through Landscape Restoration in the Sahel” and known as: “Land of Opportunity Global Mechanism (LoGMe)”, was being implemented in eight communities in the Upper West and Upper East Regions.
GNA