SADA steps up more projects to improve lives in Northern Ghana

The Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) has hinted that plans are afoot to invest into solar energy farms to add about 40 megawatts of electricity to the national grid. According to SADA, feasibility studies of various catchment areas in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone (NSEZ) are complete to give way to foreign investors to begin work. The Chief Executive Officer of SADA, Alhaji Gilbert Iddi, in an interview in Accra, reiterated the authority’s mandate to stop at nothing to execute projects and programmes in order to improve the livelihood of people in the SADA zone.

Touching on various projects SADA has invested in over the last one year, Alhaji Iddi disclosed that this year alone, SADA harvested several hundreds of tonnes of butternut squash with majority of the produce exported to the United Kingdom. He however envisaged that 2014 may record bumper harvest of the produce to meet the ever-increasing demands in the European Union.

The SADA boss lamented that although the rains did not fall that much as expected in the northern part of the country, with the support of tractor services and other farming support inputs by SADA to farmer groupings and communities, it is expected that agricultural activities in the NSEZ will improve and ultimately affect the lives of the people. So far, the authority has distributed 270 tractors through its Technical Service Providers to farmers across the SADA zone over the last one year.

Alhaji Iddi outlined a number of projects including, Sisili-Kulpawn Water Management project, massive agricultural input support services to farmers and grafted mango seedling projects as economic activities that are bound to impact positively in the lives of the people and eventually eradicate poverty in the SADA zone.

The SADA boss indicated that although the authority is doing everything possible to step up the socio-economic standards of the people, a few elements of the Ghanaian public are trying hard to tarnish the good image of SADA and what it stands for. Alhaji Iddi, however, gave the assurance that the doors of SADA are widely openned to dialogue and facilitate any project or progarmme that seeks to change the standards of living of people within the SADA catchment area.

In a related development, a reliable source close to a group calling itself Concerned Citizens of Northern Ghana, made up of young people from the Northern, Upper West and Upper east regions, is planning to hold a press conference in Bolgantanga in the Upper East Region to chastise and criticize the activities of SADA.