Deputy Director of Operations at the Canadian High Commission in Ghana, Louise Paris has reiterated on the commitment of Canada in partnering Ghana to advance the country’s agricultural sector.
Paris hinted the Canadian government will laise with Ghana to modernize agriculture, especially in the areas of rehabilitation, retooling and infrastructure upgrade of all five colleges if agriculture in the country.
The Assistant Director of Operations at the Canadian High Commission, hinted the initiative would be made possible with 125 million Canadian dollar grant from the Canadian Government.
The colleges of Agric would in addition benefit from a revised curriculum that would promote market-oriented, gender sensitive and environmentally sustainable teaching and learning.
She made those revelation at a ceremony to officially hand over refurbished and retooled science and computer laboratories to the Ohawu Agriculture College at Ohawu in the Ketu North Municipality of the Volta Region.
Ms Louise Paris stated the projects in the five colleges of agriculture was part of the Modernising Agriculture in Ghana (MAG) programme implemented by the Technical Education Development for Modernised Agriculture in Ghana (TEDMAG) and valued at 15 million Canadian dollars.
The project was funded by Global Affairs Canada and supported by the University of Missouri, USA as well as the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
The goal, she said was to equip students at the various agriculture colleges with practical agri-business, farm management, commodity value chain management skills and environmentally friendly strategies.
Ms Paris elated, through the MAG programme, Canada is directly providing CAD $125 million to the government of Ghana to help modernise the agriculture sector which has significant potential for reducing poverty and inequality in Ghana this funding will be channeled through government systems with district and regional departments of agriculture as well as the national directorate of MOFA, the CSIR and the Agriculture Colleges all receiving funds to implement their approved activities and to deliver on their respective mandates.
Women in Ghana are demonstrating greater empowerment – they have higher levels of financial autonomy allowing them to purchase some lands, mould some blocks and put up their own buildings- to purchase rudimentary agro-processing machines, to expand their agro-processing activities and to pay school fees for their children.
The Director of Human Resource and Development at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), Lawoete Tettey, wowed the initiative. He observed it was a game changer as far as agriculture programming and development in Ghana was concerned.
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