By Albert Futukpor
Tamale, Aug 26, GNA – A review and planning workshop has been held as part of the Affordable Financing for Resilient Rural Development (AAFORD) project to assess the implementation progress and address emerging challenges.
The two-day workshop was attended by a team from CARE Ghana and the AAFORD Project Coordinating Unit from Sunyani.
Mr Zakaria Yakubu, Head of Programmes and Humanitarian, CARE Ghana, speaking during the workshop, which ended in Tamale, said it was to jointly review progress of implementation so far, identify challenges, revise strategies and action plans necessary to accelerate the space and quality of project delivery.
The AAFORD project, led by the Ministry of Finance and funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), is a multi-component initiative aimed at improving food security, agricultural productivity and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, especially women and youth.
It is being implemented across 12 districts (Savelugu, Kumbungu, West Gonja, East Gonja, East Mamprusi, West Mamprusi, Mion, Karaga, Nkoranza, Sunyani West, Banda, and Asutifi South in six regions (Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Northern, Savannah, and North East.
CARE Ghana is a key implementing partner and co-financier, with technical leadership over components related to farmer capacity building, gender integration, financial inclusion and climate-resilient agricultural practices.
The implementation of CARE Ghana-led activities is in collaboration with Municipal/District Departments of Agriculture, Ghana Health Service and a network of Community Based Extension Agents (CBEAs).
CARE Ghana’s interventions contribute to two specific outcomes; enhanced resilience and productive capacity for 40,000 smallholder farmer households, and improved nutritional status for young mothers, adolescent girls and their families from 10,000 households.
So far, 26,239 farmers from 1,065 farmer groups, who are on board the project, learned about Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) for soybean, rice, maize and groundnut through group level trainings and crop demonstration plots.
Under the nutrition component, regional and district level training of trainer sessions on maternal nutrition had been organized in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service.
Bi-weekly nutrition dialogues are being organized with 5,100 women from 175 nutrition groups.
Over 2,000 households have established kitchen gardens to support cultivation and consumption of vegetables.
CARE Ghana started implementing the project in September, 2024 hence the review and planning workshop to take stock of its implementation progress over the period.
Mr Zakaria said as part of the project, rural smallholder farmers were being supported to build their capacity to effectively do farming as a sustainable business, work together in stronger groups/cooperatives and to be able to access financial services, including loans at low interest rates.
He said the Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) strategy was being promoted amongst the beneficiary smallholder farmers to manage their own savings and loans schemes and to give credit to each other based on their savings.
He said, “Currently CARE Ghana and its partners have established over 6,000 of such groups (VSLA) over the years across the country and that the Ministry of Finance is actually promoting access to formal financial services to such community based and self-managed savings and loans groups as part of the national financial inclusion strategy.”
He added that the project was also focusing on addressing gender issues, especially those social norms limiting women’s ability to have secured access to land, finances and other productive resources for their sustainable livelihoods.
Mr Zakaria said, “We are integrating the gender dialogues so that we can help to explain to farming households how they can live together peacefully, how they can share the workload in the family, how they can empower the girl-child and the boy-child at the same time, and how to improve their nutritional status and living conditions.”
He said the project helped in the roll out of nutrition support to over 10,000 young mothers and adolescent girls, adding “We are even doing cooking demonstrations. We are promoting how men and women can even do competitions during the cooking demonstration.”
He assured smallholder farmers in the beneficiary districts of the project’s support to strengthen their groups and encouraged them to collaborate to get support from not only the project but also from other sources.
Mr Godwin Anku, who is the overall Coordinator of the AAFORD project, touched on the progress made so far, saying “CARE Ghana has been super. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, they came on with already made tools and that has actually quickened the pace of our implementation. So far, we are working hard to get over 50,000 beneficiaries.”
Mr Anku, who was at the workshop with four members of the team, representing the Ministry of Finance and the AFFORD project coordination unit/secretariat based in Sunyani, said following the workshop, work would be accelerated so that “We are able to deliver very fast on the mandate that the project has given us.”
GNA
Edited by Eric K. Amoh/Christian Akorlie