West Africa Rural Foundation Opens

The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Honorable Kwesi Ahwoi, has emphasised the need to intensify the fight against poverty, adding that it has become urgent and more pressing lately as the world witnessed the recent food crisis that threatened political stability.

According to him, the food crisis, together with the fuel and financial crisis, have derailed countries' efforts at economic development and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Minister made these remarks in Accra today at the opening ceremony of West Africa Rural Foundation Workshop that seeks to impart techniques and methods on experience and innovative capitalisation.

He intimidated that in this age of advanced information and communication technology, the opportunities avail development actor, to better harness and share our experiences and innovations in the most cost effective and efficient way that impact on the development processes.

Hon. Ahwoi indicated that there appears to be consensus among development actors that increases in productivity, growth and agriculture improvement holds the key to increased poverty reduction.

He added that the International Fund For Agricultural Development (IFAD), has been in the fore front of the battle against poverty as the goal of most of the projects and programmes funded are aimed at improving the livelihoods of poor farmers disadvantaged groups marginalised at the communities.

The Coordinator for Fidafrique Project, West Africa Rural Foundation, Mr. Abdou Fall, stated that the overall goal of the programme is to connect people, organisations and networks for sharing experiences and innovation in order to better address rural poverty.

He expressed the opinion that the programme's purpose is to increase the development effectiveness of IFAD-financed projects and programmes in order to enhance policy dialogue through strengthened identification of innovation, learning and sharing processes.

The Project Coordinator believed that the creation of a consolidated knowledge network for sub-Saharan Africa among IFAD-financed projects and programmes as well as other development actors will greatly push up efforts aimed at poverty reduction.