How Karbo, Dr. Bawumia birthed ‘One Village, One Dam' policy

The Vice President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has chronicled how he and Deputy Roads Minister, Anthony Abayifaa Karbo, birthed the idea of providing all 57 constituencies of the North with dams for irrigation.

One of the most talked-about project of the NPP has been the promise of a dam for some selected villages in the Northern part of the country.

Giving a background to the conceptualization of the initiative while speaking in an interview on Accra-based Peace FM, the Vice President said “You know there are 57 constituencies in the five Northern Regions. So the idea was that we should do ten dams in each constituency. So that was the target, 570 but of course some of the constituencies are a bit urban and so you may not be able to get ten dams in those like when you go to Tamale Central and so on."

"At the moment let me give you a little bit of background when we were campaigning in 2016 before we did our manifesto for 2016 I was in the Upper West region with my brother Karbo where we met some old women digging what looked like a dam but they were really doing it with their hands pretty much a hand job so we stooped and spoke to them and at the end of the day, we were wondering why they are supposed to suffer and their problem was the unavailability of water during the dry season. So we thought that we could have small dams across all over so that they could have access to water during the dry season and that was part of the beginning of the one village one dam concept.”

The Vice President said since the government of the NPP came to power, a total of 435 One Village, One Dam contracts have been awarded out of which 372 have been completed with 63 ongoing in some constituencies in the North.

“Recently, the former President John Mahama said the One Village, One Dam hasn’t materialized but there was a documentary on one of the Television stations where they went to Bole, his own Constituency and Ten dams were functional and people are using these dams for irrigation and so on and they are very useful and there are talks about how it has saved communal fights over water in the constituency, fulani herdsmen the fight over water is very high in the North and so these dams are providing water and you should know that some people use tube wells to irrigate farms so the One Village, One Dam has helped a lot of farmers and then people who need water for their cattle, to wash cloth and to build houses and so on during the dry season. I’ve followed the various testimonies of the farmers but when you sit in Accra you may not understand the impact these dams are, you have to go down and see.”