IFAD awards Gambia US$ 34 million project to reduce poverty of rural women and youth

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has recently awarded The Gambia a US$34 million project to reduce the poverty of rural women and youth in the country. 

The project, National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development Project dubbed Nema, is to increase the incomes of rural women and youth from improved productivity based on sustainable land and water management practices.

According to Mod K. Ceesay Deputy Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Nema project is one of the biggest IFAD programmes in The Gambia to help smallfarmers, especially women and youth, to improve land and water management to increase rice and vegetable production.

Momodou Gassama, coordinator of the project, said the Nema project is targeting all the six agricultural regions in the country and will focus on women and youth to enable them to participate more actively in development initiatives.

The Nema project would support and develop further The Gambia Government’s priority to transform the largely rain-fed production systems into sustainable market-oriented agriculture based on the smallholder, mainly women and youth.

Fatou Samba Njai, President of the Women Wing of the National Coordinating Organisation for Farmers Associations The Gambia (NACOFAG) acknowledged that farmers were fully involved in design of the Nema project.

Regional experts meet in Gambia to discuss water management issues

Water management experts from West and Central Africa on Sunday completed a two-day meeting in The Gambia aimed at identifying what are the major constraints, issues and problems facing agricultural water management programs; what are the best ways to address these problems; and what kinds of new opportunities can be proposed for future programs.  

The experts - alongside regional and country programme managers of International fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) funded projects, government officials and policy makers in West and Central Africa - also shared the major results from recent projects implemented by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), which has implemented several projects in the region on water management.

The event on the theme, ‘Improving outcomes of agricultural water management investments:  Research results, lessons learned and innovative new opportunities’, was a pre-forum learning event of the 7th Regional Forum for IFAD-funded Projects taking place in The Gambia from 12^th to 15^th November 2012.

 

Speaking to journalists in Banjul on Monday, Douglas J Merrey of IWMI, said water management remains one of the most significant constrains to agricultural development in Africa.

He noted that investing in small-scale interventions for improved water control can produce a dramatic impact on the productivity of agriculture.

According to him, over the years, there was not much political commitment to water management by African governments “but things are changing now as governments are more and more beginning to appreciate the impact of water management on agricultural growth and development”.

In Ghana, for example, the government is highly commitment to water management by pumping in a lot of money on water management and these monies are provided by the government itself not the donor community, Douglas said.

Many analysts believe that future increases in food supplies and economic prosperity for the rural poor will come mainly from improved agricultural water management combined with other interventions contributing to production and productivity of agriculture.