Participatory Development Associate has called for farmer inclusion in initiatives aimed at ensuring Food security. Ensuring food security in the world features significantly on the development agenda of both governments and the development community. Food security largely refers to the access, availability and sustainability to nutritious food for everyone irrespective of status and location.
Vandzilah Technology, a fast paced growing technology solution provider that delivers business enabling technology solutions to clients in Ghana and the Global community as a whole has held a day’s symposium to map social entrepreneurs engaged in solving the food security problem of Ghana. Discussions centred on social entrepreneurship in the Agriculture value chain, how to achieve food security at the national and household levels, and the role of partnership in inducing change in the food security discourse.
Contributing to the discussion on achieving food security, Kafui Tsekpo, the head of Advocacy and Communications at Participatory Development Associates Ltd. , emphasized the importance for the farmer to be at the heart of initiatives and collaborative efforts aimed at ensuring food security. He called on social entrepreneurs and other stakeholders to place farmers at the centre of their activities “We can’t improve agriculture if we neglect the indigenous knowledge of the farmer”. He also spoke about how PDA’s PASE program is supported by community intervention services and helping to create sustainable livelihoods.
A Development Communications practitioner, Sampson Adotey Jnr, called on actors to adopt effective development communications strategy when engaging farmers. He observed that most often, laudable policies don’t achieve the desired results due to the lack of effective communication.He bemoaned that most social enterprenuers do not factor into their business modules community engagement strategies. Hence, the disconnect with farmers outside the business they do.
The event was held at the Impact Hub in Accra with over 20 participants from Ministry of Food and Agriculture, the Netherlands Embassy, UNDP and social enterprises such as Participatory Development Associates, Farmerline, among others. A follow up event will be held early next year.
Credit: PDA