Tamale, July 1, GNA - Mr Kwardjo Kwarfo Apeayeh, Acting Officer In-charge of the Water Research Institute (WRI), has appealed to Ghanaians to harvest rainwater to enhance backyard gardening.

He said last year, the Northern Region stored rainwater in reservoirs with a total surface area of 1,200 hectares for domestic use in rural communities while the Upper East Region had 222 storage reservoirs with a total surface area of 145 hectares.

Mr Apeayeh said this as part of ceremonies marking "African Renaissance Day," which was sponsored by the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University for Development Studies (UDS) and Management of Water Resources in Northern Ghana at Tamale.

It was under the theme, "Science and technology for wealth creation - the role of livestock research and development".

Mr. Walter Kpokpi, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences of UDS, urged the youth to develop their talents to promote industrialization.

Mr Kpokpi called for the judicious use of environmental resources to ensure sustainable development, saying, the country had a lot of natural resources, which could be harnessed to improve the living conditions of the people.

Dr (Mrs) Joy Bruce of the Animal Research Institute, said even though there were a lot of livestock in the Region, the people were selling the animals for weddings and funerals.

She noted that importing chicken was a contributory factor to the "killing of the livestock industry in the country". Dr Bruce called for regular vaccination of animals to protect them from diseases such as rabies and anthrax.

Mr Charles Bintim, Deputy Northern Regional Minister, said the government was committed to restructuring the educational system and to make research institutions "centres of excellence and originators of indigenous technology". He said it was in this direction that the government had set a target to make Ghana a middle-income country by the year 2015.

The President's Special Initiatives are not only aimed at creating employment for the youth but to promote export to earn foreign exchange for development.

Mr Bintim said the government was determined to make the country a pacesetter in the sub-region in the area of poverty reduction and to create wealth through the application of science and technology.