By Sanna Camara
The Country Representative of the Food and Agricultural Organisation in (FAO) The Gambia has said that the agency’s country portfolio over the past few years rose from $5.5million to $35million currently. The diplomat has come to an end of her five year tour of duty in The Gambia.
Ms. Perpetua Katea-Kalala on Thursday, June 27, 2019, paid a courtesy farewell to His Excellency, President Adama Barrow at State House. She had witnessed the last years of the former regime, the political crisis and the transition government’s journey thus far, describing it “incredible changes”. In terms of delivery, she said the FAO is delivering more than 10million a year to The Gambia.
“The FAO managed to strengthen the programme, the quality and level of assistance that we provide to The Gambia under during the past few years. FAO provides technical support in the areas of agriculture, food security, agri-business, forestry and fisheries, food quality and assurance, as well as interventions in forestry, fisheries, and other sectors,” she told the State House press corps after her audience with President Barrow.
His Excellency, President Barrow expressed appreciation for the FAO’s technical support to The Gambia. He added that their intervention, guidance and partnership had made the work of government less hectic and the vision of the NDP on food security even more achievable.
Over the years, the FAO worked closely with the ministry and the department of agriculture, and other ministries such as environment, fisheries, education youth and sports; government agencies such as the food safety agency, and the National Nutrition Agency.
Ms. Perpetua Katea-Kalala outlined some of the notable achievements registered by the UN body, such as the strengthening of the extension system in The Gambia, especially what is now called farmer field schools:
• Extension workers: There are currently over 10, 000 farmers who are part of this farmer field schools in FAO programmes. This makes it easier for the Department of agriculture staff to facilitate and broaden the base and capacity of the field schools to send out extension messages. Through this, service outreach has significantly improved.
• Seed sector: the Ministry of Agriculture launched the seed plan last week, which followed a couple of years of very intensive capacity building of the National Seed Secretariat, working with the seed growers association and organising the infrastructure, the mechanisms, to be able to certify the seeds locally. For the first time in the country, there was certified seeds available which was certified by The Gambia itself.
• Food Safety: FAO has been working with and strengthening capacity to be able to monitor the quality of food, build and spread information on how to have better food systems, better quality systems; how to monitor the surveillance system, how to improve the laboratories, etc.
• Agribusiness: we are working with agriculture to help farmers link to markets, looking at the possibility of value addition as a very crucial element if one wants to grow the sector.
• Climate smart agriculture: FAO spent a lot of time with farmers to better manage and understand impacts of climate change in the face of frequent droughts, flooding from torrential rains and rising sea levels which is contributing to salinity of the river. FAO’s work focuses on helping small holder farmers and artisanal fisheries to understand climate change issues better.
• Livestock: FAO supported the conduct of a livestock census – something that The Gambia had not been done in 20 years. Now, all the different bits of livestock that are in the country and what condition they are in are known to policy makers and others.
FAO is also working very closely with the department of Livestock on controlling the CDDP – a kind of cow-pneumonia – and they conducted a vaccination campaign with them to minimise its effects on the country’s livestock population.
