Accra – Thursday July 18, 2024: The officials of Feed the Future Ghana Policy LINK Activity and the Feed the Future Market Systems and Resilience Activity, with representatives from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), engaged the Head of Service (HoS), Ing. Dr. Nana Ato Arthur in his office.
The objective of the meeting was to brief the Head of Service on the National Dialogue on the decentralization of the agricultural sector that occurred in Tamale on April 16,2024 and the next steps from the dialogue.
Mr. Samson Konlan, the Policy Advisor & MSR Objective 4 Team Lead described the process that led to organizing the dialogue which included an assessment on strengthening decentralization for effective agricultural sector policy implementation and coordination, and the validation of the findings from the assessment by key stakeholders at the decentralized and national levels.
The validation of the findings included representatives from the Local Government Service (LGS), the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGDRD), the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), the National Development Planning Commission NDPC), the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC) including Regional and District Directorates of Agriculture and other Metropolitan, and Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The validated findings from the assessment were further presented at national dialogue and discussed among stakeholders who further presented recommendations to participant categorized according to fiscal, political, and administrative decentralization and decentralized Planning and coordination. Major challenges from the study include inadequate funding for Agricultural activities, low staffing, inadequate operational logistics, poor coordination, monitoring and reporting on activities, among others.
These challenges require immediate intervention to strengthen the Agricultural Sector. Some areas proposed for the consideration of Management of the OHLGS were the need to strengthen the staffing capacity of the Sector and develop Operational Manuals to provide a clear framework for the Sector to streamline their area of work across the Service.
The next steps from the dialogue is to develop a technical working group that will include the aforementioned MDAs to develop a Terms of Reference, prioritize the recommendations from the national dialogue and collaborate with stakeholders to implement the recommendations to contribute to strengthening the agricultural sector in Ghana.
A report from the dialogue was formally presented to the Head of Services. Policy LINK and MSR assured the Head of Service of the commitment of both Activities to support the implementation of the prioritized recommendations through the leadership of the MDAs.
The Head of Service commended the team for the efforts invested into the programme so far. He expressed the readiness of the LGS to provide the needed technical support to strengthen the agricultural sector.
Accordingly, he urged Metropolitan, Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs) to ensure that funds allocated for capacity building programmes are strictly used for the intended purposes.
Present at the meeting included the Human Resource Director of the OHLGS, Mr. Peter Essiem Asante, the Technical Advisor on the Ghana Secondary Cities Support Programmes (GSCSP) at the OHLGS, Mrs. Lena Otoo, Deputy Director, Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate (PPMED) from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Mrs. Ruby Neils-Palme, the Policy LINK Collaborating Learning, Adapting, Monitoring and Evaluation (CLAME) Lead, Mr. Seidu Abu, the USAID Embedded Advisor to MoFA, Mrs. Angela Dannson, and, the Programme Lead of Policy LINK, Mrs. Annie Dela Akanko.