Upper West re-inaugurates Census of Agriculture Management Team
The Upper West Regional Management Team of the Ghana Census of Agriculture has been re-inaugurated to kick start the collection, processing and dissemination of reliable information on agricultural activities to help policy planning and formulation.
The re-inauguration of the team became necessary because the initial team inaugurated in 2016 to oversee the data collection exercise in the region had many of the members going on transfer while others retired from active service.
The four member new team has the Regional Coordinating Director, Mr. Abdulai Abubakari, as the Chairman; the Regional Statistician, Mr Jeremiah Sixtus Dery as Secretary with the Regional Director of Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), Mr. Emmanuel Sasu-Yeboah and the Regional Director of Information Services Department, Mr Benin Issifu Duori, as members.
Mr Amidu Chinnia Issahaku, the Acting Upper West Regional Minister, who inaugurated the team in Wa on Wednesday said members would be responsible for coordination and implementation of programmes and ensure the provision of facilities for all activities and operations of the Census in the region.
The team is also expected to ensure effective education and publicity as well as facilitate information sharing and dissemination among others.
The Regional Minister said the overall objective of the exercise was to produce and disseminate complete and reliable agricultural data to meet the needs of policy makers and other users.
It would also support informed decision making and for monitoring development programmes aimed at further developing the agriculture sector and rural areas, he said.
Mr. Chinnia noted that the Census would also provide information on the rural sector and the structure of agriculture including number of farm holders and sizes of holdings and their distribution across the country.
Others are level of equipment and technology, human resource availability, land tenure systems of agricultural holdings and data on food security and sustainable agriculture among others.
Mr Issahaku said the implementation of the Census of Agriculture in Ghana came with several expected benefits including; strengthening the national agriculture statistics system, providing information on environmental issues in development programmes and projects.
It also provided benchmark data for assessing future agricultural statistical enquiries and updated sampling frame needed for annual surveys of agriculture and provided policy makers with information to better identify, prepare, implement and evaluate development projects.
The census would be useful to provide other data users including; researchers, students, industrialists, and international organisations, Non-Governmental and Non-for-Profit Organisations.
It would also provide users with complete and reliable agricultural statistics to meet their needs in planning and monitoring their food security and livelihood programmes.
The census programmes would be implemented in four phases in line with the “Modular Approach” recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for the 2020 Round of World Censuses of Agriculture.
Mr Jeremiah Sixtus Dery, the Regional Statistician, said 172 persons have been trained for the field work after which 152 comprising 26 supervisors and 130 enumerators were deployed across the region to collect data.
He said field work effectively started on April 30 this year and was expected to end in the region and the country at large by middle of July this year.
Source: GNA