TECHNOSERVE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMME ENDS (PAGE 22, DEC 30)

Technoserve (TNS) Ghana, a non-governmental organisation has since 2005, begun implementing a food security programme called the Multi Year Assistance Programme (MYAP) in the Upper East Region.
The overall goal of the programme was to build the resilience of communities and households to insecurity through agricultural assistance and institutional development of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ,supported the MYAP which was funded through the Community Enterprise Development Initiative (CEDI) Trust.
Five years on, the TNS has brought the MYAP to a close, leaving in its trail a lot of successes, which if sustained, will go a long way to help most food-insecure households and communities to build sustainable capacity to mitigate food-related shocks.
Speaking at a close-up durbar at Zebilla in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region, a Senior Programme Advisor of TNS, Mr Anthony Adom, said in the Upper East Region alone, the MYAP benefited 2,350 farming households from 42 communities which were registered into 72 co-operative groups.
He said additionally, 12 communities were supported with 16 irrigation-pumping machines for dry season farming.
The programme also constructed three 40 tonne-capacity and eleven 20 tonne-capacity grain warehouses in 14 communities in the region.
According to Mr Adom, 42 farmers were also trained as extension volunteers to augment the efforts of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture Extension Service programme.
One other intervention, which was carried out within the five-year programme, was the support to 18 communities with boreholes to increase their accessibility to potable water, Mr Adom noted.
This followed a realisation that some assisted communities did not have access to good drinking water and even where it was available, the distance covered to access the resource was so great that accessing potable water was laborious and time consuming.
Mr Adom said another significant success chalked up was in the area of improving accessibility to market centres from production sites.
He said most of the operational communities were in remote and deprived areas of the region, some of which were not passable and farmers had to trek to the nearest market centres.
During the period of the MYAP, Mr Adom said one of such routes which needed attention was the Katiu-Kayoro. The TNS-Bolgatanga supported the district assembly in blasting of rocks to level and construct retaining walls to facilitate vehicular movement for evacuation of foodstuffs and people to the market centres and to the rest of the district.
The senior programme advisor also indicated that the programme was in collaboration with the Non-Formal Education Division to train facilitators from 24 beneficiary communities to organise literacy classes for the people. The TNS and the NFED district directors supervised these classes and provided chalk, blackboards, exercise books, pencils, solar lamps and paid the monthly allowances of teachers.
To ensure sustainability of the farmer groups and the technologies transferred to them under the MYAP, the TNS facilitated registration of the farmers with the Department of Co-operatives.
Mr Adom said it was his expectation that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Department of Co-operatives would continue to work with the farmer groups in sustaining the gains of the MYAP.
TNS donated motorbikes to the Department of Co-operatives and the Gender Desk Officer of the MoFA where the programme was implemented to ensure its sustainability.
Mr Adom said although the TNS was closing out the MYAP, that did not mean that its activities in the Upper East Region had ended, as other programmes, such as the Sorghum and shea projects being implemented in the region at the moment would continue.
He commended MoFA and the Savannah Agriculture Research Institute for supporting the TNS in all its activities under the MYAP.
The Bawku West District Director of Agriculture Mr Yussif Sulemana commended the TNS for its MYAP intervention, which he said had benefited farmers in the area, stressing that farmers who participated had experienced improved changes in their farming enterprise with increased income levels which ensured food security.
The Bawku West District Chief Executive, Mr Anabah Adam Moro, noted that for farmers in the Upper East Region in general and the Bawku area in particular, the improvement in the onion farming business would trigger economic growth for the farmers.
He added that provision of irrigation-pumping machines to enable farmers to produce onions and other vegetables during the dry season was in fulfilment of the government’s agenda to create jobs for the youth and reduce the rural-urban migration that was assuming an alarming rate.
Dr Roger Kanton of SARI implored regional and district directors of agriculture to sustain the mechanism instituted by TECHNOSERVE during its intervening period to ensure food security and more income for farmers.
He also called on politicians to invest more in agriculture, particularly in the northern regions of Ghana since a successful implementation would turn the area into a grain basket for the whole nation.
A representative of the beneficiary farmers, Mr John Akonaba, expressed appreciation of the farmers to the TNS for coming to their aid, and said the lessons learnt over the period would go a long way to increase food production.