YOUTH AND FOOD PRODUCTION

Prof. Dr. Willem VAN COTTHEM

Honorary Professor University of Ghent (Belgium)
Beeweg 36 - BE 9080 ZAFFELARE (Belgium)
willem.vancotthem@gmail.com
http://desertification.wordpress.com
http://www.seedsforfood.org
http://containergardening.wordpress.com
http://zadenvoorleven.wordpress.com

Read at: NGO News Africa

GHANA: Volta Foundation to harness youth for faster

development

Ho, Feb 18, GNA - The Volta Foundation, a development

advocacy NGO, is to harness the energies of the youth to accelerate
the economic growth of the Volta Region. Mr Dumega Raymond
Okudzeto, President of the Foundation, was addressing its fourth
anniversary durbar on Thursday in Ho under the theme "Harnessing
Our Energies for the Accelerated development of the Volta Region:
2010, the Year for Youth Empowerment". He described the youth as
the region's most treasured asset without whom the repositioning of
the region for accelerated development cannot happen. Mr
Okudzeto said the Foundation had assembled a team of resource
persons to talk to the youth and inspire them to go the extra mile to
achieve their life's ambitions and become useful to the region and
the country as a whole.

Volta Foundation has since its establishment campaigned alone and

also partnered other organizations to find antidotes to the sluggish
economic growth of the region. This culminated in the November
2009 Volta Trade and Investment Exposition in Ho held by the
Foundation in collaboration with the Region's political authority and
the National Board for Small-Scale Industries (NBSSI) with technical
support from the SNV. The Eastern Portfolio Coordinator of the
Dutch Development Agency (SNV), Mr Dick Commandeur, said a
good option for the youth in the region now was to get the skills
and the cash to produce high quality agricultural produce.

He said it was not enough for officialdom to recognize that

agriculture and tourism were the important economic sectors in the
area, but also to "invest ideas, time and money to make the sectors
give a good income so that they become attractive to young
people".

Mr Commandeur called for efforts to stimulate informal businesses,

and urged young people to be "impregnated with the idea of
entrepreneurship. They should also learn to "take initiative, take
risk, elaborate new ideas and partner with others".
Mrs Dorothy Gordon, Director of the Ghana/India Kofi Annan ICT
Center, advised the youth to take advantage of the Volta
Foundation's ICT centers to be established in various parts of the
region to gain skills that would enable them to boost their chances
of getting employment.

Other papers delivered were on the state of agriculture in the region

and its prospects.

Source: GNA
http://www.ghananewsagency.org/s_economics/r_12679/
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MY COMMENT (Willem VAN COTTHEM)

Before gaining skills in the ICT centers "that would enable them to
boost their chances of getting employment", getting the skills
and the cash to produce high quality agricultural produce
would certainly be far more profitable for the African youth, not only
that of Ghana.

Young people can deliver a tremendous contribution to the

sustainable development of their region after being trained in the
best practices of agriculture and horticulture. On the African
continent, in particular in rural regions where a high percentage of
the population is regularly affected by hunger, NGOs should
concentrate their efforts on small-scale farming and small-scale
gardening.

Boys and girls can effectively help their families to secure sufficient
food and to improve the families' financial situation. Take the
example of Patrick HARRY in Malawi (see former postings on this
blog), who has set up a "Youth Club", called the "Future of Malawi",
in which he is training young people in container gardening. His
first successes were booked within a period of 2-3 months.

With very limited financial resources, rural and even urban youth
can get the skills and the cash to produce high quality
agricultural produce, be it with kitchen gardens, container
gardening, allotment gardens or with vertical gardening in the
cities. No one can deny all those success stories showing the
remarkable return on investment of these cultivation methods,
going back to the roots of the population in all the drylands of the
world. Once small-scale farming produces sufficient fresh food to
bring food security, time will come to introduce new technologies.
Let us not put the horse behind the wagon!

Helping their families to quality fresh food and creating possibilities

to take quality food to the market offers more opportunities to
"harness youth for faster sustainable development".

That is a noble challenge for all NGOs and Foundations, if not for the
international agencies concerned.