Northern Ghana undoubtedly has the greatest percentage of people living in extreme poverty — more than 60% of the population living on less than US$1 a day. The region’s environmental, epidemiological and geographical challenges — including low agriculture productivity, a high disease burden, and high transport costs render villagers most vulnerable to persistent extreme poverty. This means that to collect safe drinking water and firewood for domestic use, people must walk several miles every day.
With these rural communities trapped in a poverty web, they are unable to make the investments in human capital and infrastructure required to achieve self-sustaining economic growth.
Based on these facts, the SADA-MVP which is a five-year development project (October 2011– October 2016) from the UN Millennium Project with financial support worth US$18.1million from DFID, offers a bold innovative model for helping rural communities in the two districts lift themselves out of extreme poverty.
The SADA-MVP is based on the findings of the UN Millennium Project and is led by the science, policy and planning teams at The Earth Institute at Columbia University in South America and the Millennium Promise.
Dr. Joseph Mensah-Homiah, a project supervisor of one of the Millennium Villages Project at Bonsaaso during the validation workshop in Tamale, said simple solutions like providing high-yield seeds, fertilizers, medicines, safe drinking water, and materials to build schools and clinics would effectively combat extreme poverty and nourishing communities into a new age of health and opportunity.
According to him, improved science and technology such as agro-forestry, insecticide-treated bed nets, anti-retroviral drugs, the internet, remote sensing, and geographic information systems enriches this progress.
He told participants at the validation workshop which brought together politicians, members of the academia and those from the NGOs community that the project has put in place measures to take demographic census of the beneficiary communities to deal with migration issues that may occur. Adding, “About 30,000 people in the two districts, would benefit from the pilot SADA-MVP which is expected to increase in subsequent years. The project will add value and complement the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority’s effort in ensuring sustainable livelihood for the people”.
Dr. Mensah-Homiah also explained that the MVP provides a window within the SADA strategy to execute community-driven development actions that will stimulate the modernization of agricultural development; contribute towards DFID’s wealth creation, governance, education, and health targets for the Northern Regions of Ghana; and provide concrete and sustainable benefits to rural communities through good governance and comprehensive MDG-based development policies.
He further noted that the project combine a suite of proven, science-based interventions with the best local knowledge, through community participation and leadership in design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation; develops key basic infrastructure at the local level for health, education, water and sanitation and agriculture; and strengthen the capabilities of district health, education, agriculture and rural infrastructure departments to increase and improve service delivery.
Dr. Mensah-Homiah thus, urged strong commitment from the two District Assemblies and Regional Coordinating Councils to enable the project succeed.
The Chief Executive Officer of SADA, Alhaji Dr. Gabriel Seidu Iddi in his remarks disclosed that SADA will start its operations in October 2011 and urged people of the three regions of the north –Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions – to give the programme maximum support to make it successful.
He also appealed to people in the Northern and Upper East Regions most especially communities yet to be hooked to the SADA-MVP to exercise patience, adding that subsequent interventions will help address their developmental challenges.
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