At a meeting held at MoFA’s conference room on Wednesday 14th July 2021, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) reached an agreement with the chiefs and people of Torgome in Volta Region to allow for the use of the lands at the Kpone Left Bank Irrigation scheme for commercial agriculture under the Ghana Commercial Agriculture Project (GCAP).
The Chiefs of Torgome had threatened not to allow government to take over the lands for the Commercial agriculture. However, at the meeting, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto addressed the concerns of the chiefs and gave some assurance that, portions of the project area will be allocated to the community people for vegetable cultivation. The hon. minister said, the Kpone Irrigation Rehabilitation Project was financed by the World Bank and implemented through GCAP of MoFA at an estimated cost of $34 million, ‘The only way Government could pay back this loan was to put the project area lands into commercial agriculture’, He said.
Dr. Afriyie Akoto stated the longstanding relationship between the people of Torgome and government dating back to the 1970s when an irrigation project was implemented in the area.
According to him, after listening to the chiefs and the people of Torgome, he realized that they and Government had the same aspirations and that the fundamental problem was lack of information sharing.
He explained the condition under which Government has gone to borrow money to invest on the land. He therefore called for cooperation between Government and the people of Torgome to ensure the Kpone Irrigation Rehabilitation Project was successfully implemented.
BY UROWOLI PHILLIP