ActionAid Ghana, an advocacy non-governmental organisation has made available GH₵20 million for the 2014 fiscal year to ensure the execution of its programmes and projects to help reduce poverty and create social justice for the poor.
Alhaji Mohammed Yakubu Saani, Deputy Country Director of ActionAid Ghana disclosed this to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of a Northern Regional policy dialogue in Tamale on Friday, explained that the amount would ensure efficient implementation of its programmes to bring the needed change in the lives of many people.
The policy dialogue, which is the fourth in the series organised by the NGO, was aimed at creating space in the country to identify issues and challenges affecting development and feed into the medium and long term development plans of Regional and District Assemblies.
Alhaji Saani explained that the funds would be spent in diverse areas including that of women rights and uncared paid work, which is to advance ideas for men to assist their wives at home and young urban women project also to address challenges surrounding young ladies in urban cities.
He added that part of the amount was going to be spent on areas to change policy direction and other sections that would provide regular meetings between District Assemblies and citizens to hold the Assemblies accountable to public funds.
Mr Sumaila Abdul-Rahaman, Country Director of AAG observed that the consistent failures on various policies in the country was because of their over dependence on inflows from external sources stressing that many Assemblies� medium terms have failed because of such problems.
He said it was time Assemblies in Ghana borrowed laudable policies from Burkina Faso to solve local problems saying, �In Burkina Faso, dug outs that are created as a result of road constructions are used to construct dams for irrigation�.
The Country Director explained that such dams were used to produce vegetables such as tomatoes, onions and livestock and exported to Ghana stressing that Ghana could have done better if its arable lands and the conducive weather conditions were utilized judiciously.
Mr Abdul-Rahaman said his areas of priority as a new director of AAG would be in food security, women rights and women smallholder farmers to promote their access to lands to produce food to liberate them economically.
Alhaji Abdul-Basit Fuseini, Deputy Northern Regional Minister underscored the importance of the regional policy dialogue and indicated that the region had huge potentials but that those potentials had been derailed by negative publicities.
He urged the people in the region to think collectively to find solutions that would tackle developmental and educational problems confronting the area noting that the region has lost its position as the enviable producer of rice.
Mr Peter Claver Anyeember, Northern Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture decried the low ratio of extension officers in the region stressing that agriculture was hugely affected because new methods of farming could not be properly transferred to farmers.
He said in 2014, there were estimated 324,551 farmers in the region with only 237 extension officers explaining that each district was supposed to have 32 extension officers but in some cases, only two extension officers could be found in a district in the region.
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