Guinea fowl farmers forge collaboration with SADA

The Guinea Fowl Farmers Association in the Northern Region have reached a workable agreement with the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) on terms of production and marketing of guinea fowl to meet local demand and possibly for export.

The farmers and SADA after a long discussion on Friday agreed, among other things, to form a working group that would come out with modalities on the nature of contractual arrangement on the production and marketing of the fowl to create more jobs and reduce poverty among the people in the area.

Sayyid Alhassan, Chairman of the Guinea Fowl Farmers Association briefing the media after the meeting in Tamale said the association saw the need to collaborate with SADA/Asongtaba Guinea Fowl Production and Marketing Company Limited because of the viability of the project.

He said they were prepared to share with the new company which is a limited liability their expert opinions and assist in its growth and the development of the guinea fowl market which he said had a huge potential.

Mr. Alhassan said the recent media publications and politicizations on the guinea fowl issues was disingenuous and destructive to efforts aimed at developing the sector and appealed for caution in order not to destroy the confidence of the business.

Alhaji Gilbert Seidu Iddi, Chief Executive Officer of SADA said the new company; SADA/Asongtaba Guinea Fowl Production and Marketing Company Limited was set up in January this year with SADA contributing GHc15 million to buy shares in it while Asongtaba owns GHc25 million bringing the total capital of the company to GHc40 million.

He said the guinea fowl production involved various stages including eggs collections, hatching, broiling which constitutes production noting that after production, the fowls needs to be marketed necessitating them to start looking for market in case of excess production.

Alhaji Iddi said SADA and Asongtaba had already started a pilot project of the guinea fowl in the Upper East Region and had acquired some parcels of lands in other two regions to begin production in May this year.

He explained that SADA was not an implementing institution but a service provider hence its collaboration with other organizations to implement its programmes.

Mr. Sylvester Adongo, a retired Director of MoFA who shared his expert knowledge about guinea fowl said the need to develop guinea fowl production in the northern parts of the country was an idea started during the NPP era but it failed to materialize.

He expressed happiness with the move by SADA to rejuvenate the sector saying ‘is a dream I have been waiting for a very long time but it has been on the drawing board without implementation’.

Mr. Adongo said producers, marketers, consumers and farmers would all benefit substantially if the guinea fowl industry takes full shape and encouraged more farmers to venture into the sector.

He, however, cautioned SADA to be very careful with the selection of the farmers to get the right farmers who were prepared to venture into serious business else the project might fail.