The Ministry of Food and Agriculture in collaboration with the High Commission of Israel has started an interview selection process to choose the third batch of agriculture graduates to participate in the Greenhouse Technology programme in Israel.

The selection process underway in Accra, is to help screen and select from the 150 applicants, a number of agriculture graduates, who have participated in a greenhouse technology training, an initiative by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

At a short ceremony held on Thursday to brief the students on the processes, Ms Shani Rapaport Etsiony, Deputy Chief of Mission, Embassy of Israel, said the programme forms part of the good bilateral relations between the Israeli Government and her Ghanaian counterparts.

“This is a collaboration between the Government of Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the State of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

The programme falls under the Agency of Israel for International Cooperation and Development, and it was to assist Ghana on its roadmap to the “Ghana beyond Aid Agenda.”

Through the programme Ghanaians would acquire the knowledge and experience in agriculture and innovation as well as in diaspora affairs, Ms Etsiony said.

She said the interns are expected to come back to Ghana to pass on the knowledge and technology acquired to their fellow farmers while establishing their own farm enterprises, by starting small and become big entrepreneurs later in life, all in the bid to help grow the Ghanaian economy.

The Deputy Chief of Mission said: “Even though it is an internship, the interns will earn money each day and they can save the money and later use it as a start-up for their own enterprises back in Ghana, together, with the tools that the Ministry of Agriculture will provide”.

Mr Yaron Tamir, Chief Executive Officer, AgroStudies, an Agriculture Capacity Building based in Israel, said the selected students would in September, travel to Israel to begin a 11-month long intensive practical agricultural training to be coordinated by Agrostudies.

He explained that the programme introduced in Ghana in 2018, offers apprenticeship that focuses on agriculture capacity building and promotes food security.

So far over 120 apprentices have benefited from the programme with the second batch being expected back home in September.

Mr Tamir said the selection process would just look for hardworking graduates entrepreneurs, who are eager to succeed and determined to do something with their lives, “since the tools we are going to give will help them to be very successful farmers”.

He said the Ghanaian interns would be among the over 16,000 beneficiaries selected from Africa, Asia and South America to meet at the largest meeting points of agronoms in the world.

They would be taken through activities and courses in entrepreneurship, tree farming, aqua farming, post-harvest, irrigation, as well as maintaining international standards to enable them export what they would later grow in their countries.

Mr Kennedy Osei Nyarko, Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in charge of Horticulture, thanked the government of Israel for partnering Ghana to offer opportunities for its unemployed young people.

He urged those who would be selected to stay true to the programme and not abscond when they get to Israel, but to take advantage of the opportunity, work hard and come back to establish themselves and make a better living.

He asked them to pay particular attention to the new technology in town, the Greenhouse technology, and aim to mitigate against climate change impact and against de-afforestation and enable open agriculture, so they would be able to use that to improve upon farming in Ghana.