SADA Lack Appropriate Human Resources to Bring Needed Results – Shukla

Alhassan Andani, Board Chairman, SADA

The biggest weakness or challenge facing the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) at the moment, is the lack of appropriate human resources to do the work that will bring results; Executive Director of the Centre for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Naresh Shukla, has observed.

According to Mr. Shukla, his involvement with SADA as a service provider since 2012 has opened his eyes to a lot of knowledge-gaps in terms of implementation and coordination of projects, stressing that persons who are charged with certain responsibilities are seemingly ineffectual and thus cannot also manage incompetent people under them.

In an interview with The Advocate, he also says there is the need to employ the services of capable people as service providers. “What is being done currently is that, many of those who have been hired, the criteria used in selecting them was based on “I know this man…” rather than you’re capable and so am hiring you to do the job”, he claims.

He says for instance, the whole of Northern Ghana is dominated by smallholder farmers, and this requires professionals who are highly conversant with agriculture to be able to deal with farmers and not the calibre of people SADA has engaged as service providers, because some of them lack the appropriate skills to do the job. 

Mr. Shukla however, maintains that, SADA has not deviated from its mission or objectives as some people claim and that it is on course, but rather the implementers are the problem.

He also laments that service providers are being frustrated in their bid to succeed in the task assigned them, saying “fertiliser is needed in the month of June but it comes in the month of August when crops are already dead. Seeds are supposed to come in the month of May…… but it comes at the end of July. So the resources of the country is wasted due to bad timing”, he states.   

According to him, he was given an amount of GH¢25,000.00 as capital to plough 500 hectares for farmers in the Yendi, Mion and Tamale districts, adding that, the stated amount is in addition to seeds, fertiliser and tractors. “A bag of fertiliser is equal to a bag of maize. So last year, I gave SADA 5000 bags of maize as payment in kind for the money, fertiliser, seeds and tractor support given to me” he explains.

In some cases, he says, farmers who were supported by some service providers sold their produce to other buyers and spent the money. “As soon as harvesting starts, we (service providers) need to go with sacks, fill the sacks and take them to SADA; but many of the service providers lack the capacity to do that.”  

Dr. Charles Jebuni, C.E.O, SADA

Mr. Shukla also disclosed to this paper that, several bags of maize harvested from last year’s cropping season and stored at the SADA warehouse went bad. Other service providers did not fumigate their maize when they realized they would not be compensated for fumigating them, he said. “The corn shellers procured for the service providers were also not of good quality and therefore could not do the shelling properly”, he reveals.  

He suggests that, tractors, fertilizers and seeds should be released to service providers at the right time, noting that that will make a greater impact if seriously considered. SADA, he notes, must also hire the services of experienced and capable people who understand farm management and not people they know by face or relation.

Mr. Shukla also criticizes the manner in which farmers were cutting down shea trees because they have been encouraged by SADA to go into grafted mango plantation saying “Ghanaians don’t need grafted mangoes because they cannot withstand the weather. Shea nuts have been exported very well as compared to mangoes and so SADA should expand the commercialization of shea nuts instead of mangoes”, he opined. 

He recommends that, service providers also need basic training on tractor services so that when they develop technical faults on the field, owners will be able to repair them themselves rather than waiting on SADA Secretariat to send mechanics to repair the tractors by which time the deadline would have beaten them.

Meanwhile, Director of Programmes for SADA Dr. Emmanuel Abeere-nga, in response says, the delay in recruiting technical staff and the usual bureaucracy involved in procurement processes also led to the delay in releasing funds on time to purchase farm inputs for service providers. 

He also maintains that the processes used in recruiting service providers for SADA is a rigorous one, adding that, experts from savannah agricultural research institute, ministry of food and agriculture and representatives of civil society organisations among others, are put together in a team to do the selection. “Thus, I don’t doubt at all that these service providers we’ve engaged have the capabilities to do the job given them”, he stressed. 

Nonetheless, Dr. Abeere-nga states that after recruitment, some people in for instance in the Upper West and Northern Regions were later brought on board as service providers and perhaps it is the ability of such persons that can be questioned, adding that as they move forward, anyone who fails to meet the standards set by SADA, will be dropped.

He also confirms that, the locally manufactured corn shellers procured for service providers were of inferior quality. However, he explains that the manufacturer admitted he could not get the right measurements because it has been long they manufactured some for sale and promised to improve upon the quality in subsequent production.

Undoubtedly, Northern Ghana has the greatest percentage of people living in extreme poverty with more than 60 percent of the population living on less than US$1 a day. The region’s environmental, epidemiological and geographical challenges including low agricultural productivity, a high disease burden rate and high transportation cost makes villagers who are the most vulnerable to live in 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, SADA, a government policy initiative established by an Act of Parliament (Act 805, 2010) is aimed at addressing the development gap that exists between Northern and Southern Ghana. SADA’s mandate is to accelerate the socio-economic development of the Savannah belt through strategic investment in resource development. It envisions a “Forested North” by 2030, where agricultural production is modernised and oriented towards a larger market. 

The SADA initiative has six unique pillars which include the development of a comprehensive regional and ecological strategy; a model for the modernisation of agriculture; development of strategic infrastructure; strong linkage between Northern Savannah and the Sahelian countries; a vigorous private sector initiative that strengthens existing private operators and active support for Civil Society Organizations and NGOs.