Gambia lauds Zambia’s agricultural sector

A DELEGATION from Gambia has described Zambia’s agricultural sector a rare innovation-showcasing Africa’s capacity to be food secure when working with farmers and the private sector to fight poverty and grow the economy.

Gambia’s Permanent Secretary in the Office of the Vice President, Loum Alieu, speaking when he met the Smart Zambia Institute national coordinator Percy Chinyama said, Zambia remained Africa’s testimony of how agriculture if well executed, would help fight poverty among households.

He said Gambia’s agricultural sector, surviving on among other crops, groundnuts, sorghum, among others, with rice being the staple food had struggled to develop its smallholder and commercial farmer population through the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) and other incentives over the years.

Despite the government spending about US$10 million in its annual budgets to provide incentives to the farmers, the sector performance has not performed well, hence frustrating the country’s quest to effectively provide its people the desired national social protection.

Mr. Alieu said Gambia remained desirous to learn from Zambia some of the best practices and develop its outreach capacity and empower many of the people.

“We are impressed with Zambia’s innovation which are all electronically designed and we would like to replicate and mainstream these national social protection practices so that we can develop a better farming system and improve our people’s lives as they will grow food on their own and sustainably while we can also export some of it,” he said.

He commended Zambia for the innovations which had helped reduce urban and rural poverty.

And Mr Chinyama commended Gambia for considering Zambia as it carries out a fact-sharing mission to revitalise its agricultural sector and pledged unwavering support through its e-government innovations.