The World Bank has indicated its intention to further increase support to it funded projects in Ghana, with emphasis on poverty reduction.
This was made known by the Bank’s Africa Vice President, Dr. Hafez Ghanem in an interview at Akuse during his site visit to some of the funded projects in the country.
Dr. Ghanem said, “we will be very happy to increase support for social intervention programmes in Ghana, as and when more requests come. This is critical because these are the types of projects we want to support. We want to support more people especially women from poverty.”
The first project visited was the Rosh Pinnah Farms, which focused on greenhouse farming, a project under West Africa Agriculture Productivity Programme (WAAPP), supported by the World Bank Group.
WAAPP is a two-phase, 10-year Adoptable Programme. The first of WAAPP involves three countries – Ghana, Mali and Senegal.
The Bank supported the initial phase of the programme in Ghana with an amount of US$15 million from 2007 to 2012 while the second phase, from 2013 to 2017, was supported with US$ 60 million.
The priority commodities for the WAAP includes, identified roots and tubers, livestock, rice, cereals among others as the commodities that make the greatest contribution to the region’s agricultural growth and production.
The second site visit was at the Vegpro Ghana Limited, an agro firm that produces ‘baby corn’ in Fodzoku, in the Volta Region mainly for export into the European market.
The active International Development Association portfolio in Ghana comprises 21 projects, cutting across all major sectors including energy, transport, education, water and sanitation, among others. All World Bank commitments stand at US$1.731 billion with about 66 per cent disbursed.
By Joshua W. Amlanu
