AICCRA’s impact in central Ghana recognized by Department of Agriculture
Farmers in Ghana’s central region are building their climate resilience with support from AICCRA and local implementing partners. In a recent meeting with a delegation from the World Bank and AICCRA’s Ghana team, the Central Regional Director of Agriculture praised the project’s positive impact in the region - particularly in enhancing national collaboration and gender inclusion.
“Amongst the development projects in this region, AICCRA is leading in reach, output and impact,” Dr Peter Omega, the Director of the Department of Agriculture in the Central Region said when a delegation from the World Bank and AICCRA paid a courtesy call on him in Cape Coast during the Bank’s monitoring mission to AICCRA’s partner communities earlier this year.
Dr Omega commended the project for its commitment to gender inclusion, saying, “Another thing I like about AICCRA is female involvement. They are involving women in all their activities.”
He noted AICCRA’s support in connecting the Department of Agriculture to the Ghana Meteorological Agency to receive weather and climate information as meaningful progress.
“We did not have this in the past,” Dr Omega said.
The Environmental and Social Framework in action
The World Bank’s visit to Ghana’s Central Region was to assess environmental and social safeguards standards at AICCRA Ghana’s technology parks in Ghana in accordance with the Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework (ESF).
The team visited AICCRA’s technology parks in the Ankaful, Saaman and Effutu communities where farmers and officers of the Department of Agriculture shared their impressions on the climate-smart technologies the project is promoting and the precautions they take when using pesticides in the parks and on their farms.
The World Bank’s Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), which informed the Ghana Cluster’s Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP) for piloting validated climate-smart agriculture technologies in partner communities, entreats AICCRA and partners to ensure that women and vulnerable groups benefit from the project’s activities.
It also calls for measures against forced labour and child labour, and safety procedures for using and disposing of chemicals used on the field.
Speaking about her assessment of AICCRA’s work in the Central Region, Eloise Fluet, the World Bank’s Senior Social Development Specialist who led the assessment exercise, described the extent of stakeholder engagement and sensitization as commendable.
"Overall, we have seen a lot of positives. We see the positive impacts of sensitizing farmers on environmental and social safeguards through field activities. The stakeholder engagements have paid off. I am happy to see increased female engagement and that AICCRA applied lessons learned from the first phase.” - Eloise Fluet, the World Bank’s Senior Social Development Specialist
She continued, “Another concern of the Bank is the safe use of pesticides. We have seen that it is done through close supervision by the extension agents. Supervision helps ensure farmers’ safety.”
Moving beyond safe use of chemical pesticides
AICCRA Ghana is committed to continuing to support safe practices regarding pesticide use, but we are working beyond that with extension officers to reduce farmers’ reliance on chemical pesticides. The project promotes One Health-compliant climate-smart agriculture technologies for maize, yam, cowpea, sweet potatoes, and vegetables, including using natural remedies as alternatives to chemical pesticides.
In the Central Region, One Health solutions, such as sweet potato vine and soil treatment with neem leaf powder and onion borders for sweet potatoes, have been shown to lower pest infestation and produce higher yields.
Emmanuel Amponsah (wearing the orange hat), a sweet potato farmer in the Central Region, has doubled his yields after using the neem leaf powder biopesticide innovation promoted by AICCRA as part of its One-Health technologies.
Author
Reginald Ofori Kyere, Communications Officer, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture & AICCRA Ghana Cluster
