By Fatou B. Cham
A team from IFAD recently concluded and presented their findings on the Resilience of Organisations for Transformative Smallholder Agriculture Project (ROOTS) in The Gambia.
Ms. Hauoa Sienta, IFAD Country Director in charge of Gambia and Guinea, affirmed that the objective of the mission is to principally supervise the ROOTS project. “And on top of that we needed to do a report for the Rural Poor Stimulate Facility, which comes as a grant of about half a million Dollar given to the Gambia by IFAD to help the beneficiaries against the impact of Covid-19 through cash transfers, seeds and fertilizer,” she revealed.
On the findings of the mission, Madam Sienta congratulated the government of The Gambia and the project team, saying the supervisory team was generally impressed with the project.
She added that the project team worked hard to deliver on the ground and the government on the other hand, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Finance is keen to support and deliver so that the project reaches its target.
However, she pointed out that key challenges in the findings include the recruitment of staff. “As of today we still have key positions that are still open to be filled although the Ministry has just finalized the recruitment,” she asserted.
She went on: “We have some delays in some of the areas of project implementation; for instance land management, and irrigation, but the delays can be explained by the late establishment of the project due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the delay to bring staff on board, which is linked to the recruitment. But overall things are going well with the project,” she noted.
The IFAD Country Director disclosed that they have discussed with the Minister of Agriculture; and AFD, who will be co-financing the project, about the funding.
“We have some of the financing that has not yet been finalised or approved, which happens to create a financial gap, which we are now managing to cover with the AFD funding”.
Mr.Mamud Jagne, Director of the ROOTS project, stated that the project is doing well in some areas while struggling in some other areas.
“The areas we think are doing well are the establishment of new gardens and completion of the gardens that were commenced by the NEMA project. We managed to put those gardens into production and we have even started harvesting and selling the produce within a period of six months,” he explained.
He added that they are also working on the irrigation infrastructure for women to utilise during the dry season.
The Project Director buttressed that they are also doing well when it comes to the capacity development of their beneficiaries specifically the literacy, numeracy and gender action learning systems. This he noted improves their capacity to communicate better but also to plan their objectives and to work towards achieving the objectives.
“We have set up the systems and structures long ago together with the policies all of which we did last year including having a regional presence,” he stated.
He went on: “We are also working on the cold storage facilities where products can be stored to prevent post-harvest losses”.
He concluded by lamenting that the major challenge of the project is that they have had donor pledges most of which are yet to be realised, thereby constricting the amount of work they should do; thus impacting their ability to meet public expectations; most especially project beneficiaries.
