The Country Director of the World Bank, Mr Pierre Laporte, paid a working visit on 21 and 22 October 2023 to certain communities in the East, Greater Accra and Volta regions, which will benefit from the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP). He was accompanied by Ms Ashwini Rekha Sebastian, World Bank Team Leader for the FSRP-Ghana, Mr Osei Owusu Agyeman, FSRP National Coordinator, and technical experts from the project. These reconnaissance visits were intended to enable Mr Laporte to observe the final preparations for the launch of the project and to interact with the intended beneficiaries.
The FSRP is intended for farmers and value chain players in the lower Volta basin, the white/red Volta basin and the middle belt, as well as in northern Ghana. The field trip took him to the right and left banks of the Kpong Dam: the Kpong Irrigation Scheme at Asutsuare in Greater Accra and Akuse in the Eastern Region, and the Kpong Left Bank Irrigation Scheme (KLBIS) at Torgorme in the North Tongu District of the Volta Region, where Mr Laporte interacted with engineers, farmers and agricultural value chain actors. Project engineers took him on a tour of agricultural sites where permeability works have been carried out under the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP) and are due to be completed under the FSRP. He also visited a number of farms and spoke to key players about the nature of the food production value chain in the region, who shared their concerns with him, including their dependence on the sun to dry harvested rice, the destructive effect of heavy goods vehicles on their feeder roads and the low income from the sale of their produce.
The head of the World Bank task force said that the project would take into account the installation of rice mills with dryers in the region, and would target private sector players to facilitate the drying, storage and warehousing stages of the value chain.
The FSRP project coordinator, Mr Owusu Agyeman, assured them that the FSRP would be of immense benefit to those who want to take agribusiness to the next level. He added that one of the main objectives of the West Africa Food System Resilience Programme (FSRP) is to ensure that conflicts, climate change and other unpredictable factors do not disrupt the destiny and nutritional livelihood of farmers, families and communities. He advised farmers and key players in the agricultural sector to register their details with the FSRP and PFJ 2.0 database, in order to obtain timely information on the opportunities available to farmers and how to access or benefit from them.
