NOGAID Launches NDI project

Tamale, Aug. 5, GNA- Northern Ghana Aid {NOGAID) a Tamale-based international development organisation, at the weekend launched the Northern Development Initiative [NDI] Project, which seeks to eradicate poverty and promote sustainable development in the North. Mrs Bariatu Amadu, Deputy NDI Team Leader and Director of Gender Affairs of NOGAID, who launched the project in Tamale, said poverty in the North was a national crisis that called for concerted action to reverse it.

The NDI has three interventions namely; Northern Ghana Development Conference, The Northern Working Group and Northern Ghana Millennium Fund for Rapid Development(NORTHFUND). Mrs Amadu said work had started in 34 districts of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions to gather the relevant data to help experts to develop strategies to reduce poverty in the area. She said the Initiative would convey a national emergency conference, this year to bring together stakeholders on a national platform to brainstorm and evaluate the development trend in the North and assess development assistance and investment impact to the area. It would also propose a workable solution for accelerated poverty reduction in the area.

Mrs Amadu said the conference would launch a multi-million dollar fund to be known as NORTHFUND to galvanise resources from corporate and development partners to support local initiatives to hasten the development in the North to facilitate the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.

She said NOGAID was concern about the 'left- back' scenario in development and poverty reduction in the country, which had culminated in the uneven progress in the national battle against poverty and sustainable development.

"Against this backdrop the NDI project is timely and we shall declare 2008 a national year of positive action against poverty at the Northern Ghana Development Conference later this year. "I therefore urge all and sundry especially the local government, corporate and donor partners to support the NDI Initiative to succeed," she said. Mrs Amadu said the NDI initiative was striving to make poverty a thing of the past in the North and called for all hands on deck.