By Mamadou Edrisa Njie
In an exclusive interview with Mansa Banko Online, the National Agricultural Land and Water Management Development Project (Nema), Director, Mr. Momodou L. Gassama, in his office on Tuesday, 18th June, 2019, highlighted some of the project’s success with special focus on the producer cooperatives formed by the Nema project.
According to Mr. Gassama, since the official launching of the project in 2012, it has greatly impacted on the lives of Gambian women and youth saying that the project was able to form six producer cooperatives in six regions which have generated a savings of eleven million dalasis (D11,000,000.00) between them.
The six cooperatives are: Boiram and Kudang in Central River Region South (CRR South), Bajarally Suba in Central River Region North (CRR North), Jurunku and Salikene in North Bank Region (NBR), and Pakalinding in Lower River Region (LRR).
“Today, I can attest that the six cooperatives that are supported are purchasing fertilizer for themselves from the Gambia Groundnut Cooperation’s (GGC’s) and they’ve built the trust with the GGC; even after the Nema project phases out, these cooperatives will function as economic operators and will be able to buy fertilizer and other input for themselves”.
Nema means “prosperity” in the Mandinka language, and the overall goal of the Nema project is indeed to reduce poverty among women and youth, and specifically to increase incomes from improved productivity based on sustainable land and water management.
The project is designed for women, who are the core rice and vegetable producers in the country, and poor young men and women have also been targeted for market-oriented vegetable production and agricultural businesses.
The project has also been engaging with value-addition actors, service providers and operators in the rice and vegetable markets, including producers’ organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises through a component on agricultural commercialization.
The Nema project financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Rome based UN Agency that specializes in rural development
He stated that the impact of the Nema project in the agricultural value chain has also resulted to the operationalization of the Agricultural Value Chain Interaction Platform (AVIP), which is two-years’ partnership jointly implemented by the West Africa Rural Foundation (WARF) based in Dakar, Senegal and the Global Youth Innovation Network Gambia Chapter (GYIN Gambia Chapter), a youth network focusing on rural developments in the Gambia.
According to Mr. Gassama, the Nema project has invested heavily on infrastructural development for increased rice production and productivity; 12,724ha hitherto salt-water area reclaimed for lowland production, 4630ha improved with run-off water control infrastructure for upland production and 400ha developed for tidal irrigation rice production across the six agricultural regions earmarked for project coverage.
“Supporting the Upland, Lowland and Tidal Irrigation schemes, has boosted the production capacity of hitherto unproductive agricultural land thus ensuring improved livelihoods of farmers” noted Mr. Gassama.
On the need to improve agriculture value chain performance, Mr. Gassama observed that farmers first need capacity building to better organise themselves into specialized groups to better engage in production, transportation, processing and marketing of their products.
The Nema Project Director notes “the Nema project has supported a lot of trainings for Gambian farmers and provided farming equipment, access roads, cause ways, exchange visits among others and all these are linked to the value chain performance,” He adds: “with manual labor it is not possible to optimally utilize this land and for that reason Nema has provided support in our own little way through these six farmer co-operatives in terms of equipment such as six tractors, 18 rice planters, six rice milling machines medium size up to standard- one of its kind in the country and also twelve combine rice harvesters… all this is geared towards ensuring that production systems are effective and efficient.
He continued, “we have also formed and strengthened Village Farmer Associations (VFAs) at all Nema intervention sites for so they participate in the monitoring of project activities, and for ownership and sustainability”. These VFAs, he added have been registered with appropriate authorities to give the farmers the legal status to operate as economic operators along the agricultural value chain.
He went further to say that these VFAs are able to manage themselves and at the same time promote networking and sharing of experiences among themselves in the regions”, said Gassama.
The project has empowered farmers to become economic operators thus support them with quality seeds and fertilizer in the 2017-2018 cropping season, stated by Nema Boss.
“The project has helped in increasing production as well as contributed in the construction of stores and markets, which are critical for sustainable rice and horticulture value chain development,” pointed out by Mr. Gassama.
“We’re now supporting the producer cooperatives with 19 seeds and grains storage facilities that will make it possible for farmers to store and access rice and field crops at appropriate periods for marketing. We have now started the construction of six cold storage facilities in each of the regions which will ensure that vegetables can be stored for long periods thus support the challenges women face in the marketing of horticultural produce.”, he concluded.
