The 35 million dollars Savannah Investment Programme (SIP) and the Savannah Zone Agricultural Productivity Improvement Project (SAPIP) of the African Development Investment Bank (AfDB) have received applauds from benefitting farmers of the projects.
The farmers expressed their excitement about the project during the inspection of the projects by AfDB in Tamale.
According to him, the intervention had transformed and made them shift from being smallholder farmers to commercial farmers.
Looking at the benefits served them by the projects, the farmers asked the bank to extend the project to other African countries to help in addressing agriculture-related challenges.
One of the benefiting farmers, Mr. Osman Abdulai, the Farm Manager of the Cudjoe Abimash Farms, mentioned that when he joined the projects in 2019, it was formally cultivating less than 31 hectares for beans and soybean, but now, the farm cultivates no fewer than 253 hectares for maize and soybean.
He added that the farm moved from the cultivation of 253 hectares in 2020 to 450 hectares and grew to about 963 hectares of cultivation for the maize and soybean.
He however added that he is aiming to cultivate no fewer than 1,500 hectares of land for soya and maize.
“We were simultaneously increasing our productivity from less than two tonnes of maize to an average yield of five tonnes of maize, per hectare and two tonnes for the soybean,’’ he said.
Another beneficiary of the project, Mr. Mohammed Shaibu, the Chief Executive Officer of Ms. Wunzooya Farms in Tamale, indicated that the project had assisted them to produce more and expand the farm through the provision of poultry feeds and birds.
“Currently, we were rearing around 3,000 birds but with the intervention of SIP, we started rearing about 5,000 birds of different species.
“With the SIP, we were able to expand because of the intervention they brought to us,’’ he said.
The Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers (GNAPF), Northern region, Mr. George Dassah, called on the bank to sustain the SIP project and also extend the gesture to other African countries for food availability.
“Ghanaian farmers commend AfDB’s $ 35 million investment in Northern Ghana”
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