By Philip Tengzu
Buka (UW/R), March 13, GNA – The residents of Buka community in the Wa West District are set to experience a major boost to their economic livelihoods following the handing over of an irrigation dam to promote all-year-round agricultural production in the community.
The dam, with a storage capacity of 85,000 cubic metres, had the potential to support a 30-acre irrigable land, which would reduce the community’s over-reliance on rain-fed agriculture, improve agricultural productivity and strengthen food security in the area.
ActionAid Ghana (AAG) constructed the dam under the Strengthening Community Resilience through Community Action Plans (CAPS) component of the Resilience against Climate change (REACH) project.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) implemented the REACH project, co-financed by the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Recounting the potential benefit of the dam during a brief ceremony at Buka to hand over the facility, Mr Paul Mwinlanaa, a resident, said it would significantly transform their livelihoods and economic fortune as most of the people were farmers.
“The majority of the people in this community are farmers, so during the dry season, they travel down south to look for jobs due to limited economic opportunities here during that period of the year.
But with this dam, we can engage in farming, especially vegetable production during the dry season and that will encourage a lot of the young people and women to stay in the community,” Mr Mwinlanaa explained.
He thanked the EU, BMZ, GIZ and AAG for the interventions and gave the assurance that the community members would maintain the facility to ensure it benefited posterity.
Mr John Nkaw, the Country Director of ActionAid Ghana, indicated that the facility would enable farmers in Buka engage in vegetable and crop cultivation throughout the year, as well as provide water for livestock in the area.
He added that it would reduce the burden on women who often travelled long distances to access water for domestic and agricultural use.
Mr Nkaw said the CAPS intervention formed part of the project partners’ objective to strengthen community resilience to climate change through sustainable agriculture, improved natural resource management, and enhanced access to productive resources such as water and land.
Through the CAPs, AAG constructed five dams, five irrigation systems and sixty boreholes in beneficiary communities in the Upper West and Savannah Regions.
The programme had also distributed over 35,000 economic tree seedlings and established 28 demonstration farms to promote climate-smart agricultural practices.
Mr Nkaw said the initiative aligned with AAG’s strategic objectives of promoting green and secure economic livelihoods, active citizenship, public transparency, and gender-responsive services.
“Our work focuses on supporting communities to adapt to climate change through agroecology or organic farming, sustainable natural resource management, and improved access to productive resources such as water and land,” he explained.
In a message on her behalf, Mrs Paulina Rozycka, the Head of Infrastructure and Sustainable Development at the EU Delegation to Ghana, expressed optimism that the facility would transform the economic fortunes of people in the community whose livelihoods depended on agriculture.
Beate Weiskopf, the Project Lead at GIZ, indicated that the facility was the community’s identified priority area for development, which signified practical resilience-building in action.
GNA
Edited by Caesar Abagali/ Christabel Addo