EC to continue supporting developing countries

Lito (NR), May 29, GNA - Mr. Kurt Cornelis, head of operations of the European Commission (EC), on Thursday said that the Commission would continue to support the development of developing countries including Ghana, to reduce poverty by half by 2015.

He said efforts by development partners in this regard should serve as wake-up call to all the developing countries to increase efforts and commitments towards the realization of social and economic development to increase productivity in the agriculture sector. Mr. Cornelis gave the assurance at Lito, a farming community in the Central Gonja District, where he launched the EC Northern Ghana Food Security Resilience Project, aimed at reducing food insecurity and promoting economic activities in the Northern sector of Ghana.

The 20-month project is being implemented by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), which seek to reduce food insecurity among 10,000 poor and vulnerable small-scale rural farmer households. The project would offer agriculture inputs to beneficiary farmers to build capacity of client farmers and create market linkages and support each of the 10,000 farmer households to plough one acre of land each and provide them with improved seeds and other planting materials. Mr. Cornelis said over the past 35 years, the EC had provided financial and technical support for the government and people of Ghana towards poverty reduction, infrastructure development, promotion of good governance, trade improvement, access to clean water and agriculture. He said the Commission had appreciated Ghana's excellent implementation of EC projects and that the country would continue to receive EU support towards food insecurity to better the living conditions of the people. Mr. Salisu Be-Awuribe, Central Gonja District Chief Executive, advised beneficiary farmers to ensure that they understood the terms and conditions of the support so that they would not feel cheated at the end of the farming season.

He advised the project implementers to make terms of the programme opened to the beneficiaries adding that the terms should be made known to them in their local languages before they enter into any agreement. He said the District was endowed with a lot of water sources and appealed to ADRA to help harvest and store rain water for irrigation during the lean season to increase food production. Dr. William Yaw Kpakpo Brown, Country Director of ADRA, said the Agency was a humanitarian arm of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, working to bring relief and development to individuals and communities irrespective of their race, gender and religion. He said that food security was a major area of support and with funding from USAID, ADRA implemented food security projects between 1996 and 2007, in which 30,000 poor farmers in nine regions of the country were supported.