<<Print>>

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and Government have signed the Comprehensive Country Programming Framework (CPF) 2018-2022.

The document developed with consultation with key government Ministries, Department and Agencies together with stakeholders has three priority areas.

These are Sustainable agriculture drives agro-Industrialisation and economic growth, Sustainable Natural Resource Management for a safe, secure and productive environment and building resilience and reduced vulnerability and poverty reduction.
Dr Abebe Haile-Gabriel, the FAO Regional Representative for Africa, speaking at a signing ceremony on the CPF for Ghana, said it intended to provide guidelines for the implementation of the priority areas.

Dr Abebe, who signed for FAO, said the design of the CPF had been informed by important government policy documents and also it was aligned with UN development Assistant Partnership document.

As part of the ceremony, FAO has also signed two project agreement documents with government as part of the implementation process for the CPF.

The Regional Representative for Africa said the first project was on supporting smallholder farmers, particularly agro-forestry cocoa-based farmers to work on the reclamation of their degraded lands by the galamsey menace with funding from the Japanese government of 800,000 dollars.

He said the other project was on conservation agriculture and integrated pest management and soil fertility with financing support of $400, 000 from the FAO.

Dr Abebe said these two projects were aimed at helping operationalized the CPF agreement.
"In total, we have signed two projects valued at 1.2 million dollars," he added.

He commended government and other stakeholders for the development of the country's CPF.
He said FAO was committed to the framework with the focus on the provision of technical assistance and it was a demonstration that FAO was taking practical actions in terms of the implementation of the CPF.

Dr. Jule Nura, Minister of State in Charge of Agriculture, commended the leadership of FAO for its continuous support to the sector.
He said the project with the conservation agriculture and pest management fully aligns with government's own priority.

He expressed the hope that the technical staff would learn much concerning the areas of pest management and conservation agriculture, since government had attempted it before but was not successful.