Accra, Dec. 1 GNA - Many African countries are heavily dependent on agriculture yet in many of these countries farmers do not have a voice. According to the World Bank, the agriculture sector supports more than 400 million rural people worldwide, of whom 170 million live on less thana dollar a day.

Speaking at the opening of a three-day Regional Project Implementation workshop in Accra on Tuesday, Food and Agriculture Minister Kwesi Ahwoi said though the challenges facing the agriculture sector was huge they were not insurmountable and identified productivity gaps, weak infrastructure as some of the challenges.

Representatives of government, civil society and farmer organizations, the private sector, development partners, project staff and staff of International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are meeting in Acc= ra from 1-4 December to discuss lifting performance to achieve greater resul= ts and impact of IFAD-supported country programmes in Western and Central Africa. The workshop is organized by IFAD in conjunction with the Ministry o= f Food and Agriculture. The over 200 participants attending are expected to discuss respecti= ve country action plans to strengthen project performance and results. Thema= tic learning working groups will discuss rural and agricultural finance and rural enterprise, agricultural value chains development and support to capacity building.

The Agriculture Minister said only four million hectares of new irrigable land had been added in Africa over the last 40 years compared t= o 25 and 32 million hectares for China and India respectively. "How can we ensure sustained production for the market and industry when it is dependent on erratic and unreliable weather which is further threatens by climate change?" Mr Ahwoi he asked.

Africa, he said, needed to recognize that agriculture was no longer just a tool for production and so should be situated and well integrated with other sectors to enhance its impact on food security, poverty reduction, growth as well as sustainability.

He said due to the small-scale nature of farmers, Africa needed to concentrate in the short to medium term in organizing the farmers and building their capacity to enable them to integrate well into food and commodity value chains that were currently being promoted as a way of increasing efficiency and profitability in production and marketing syste= ms. Mr Ahwoi said he had promised to double rice production in two years=

and added that combined harvesters were working in the rice field to take=

the burden off farmers. On bad roads linking the farming communities to the urban centres he=

said the Ministry of Transport was liaising with his ministry to tackle t= he problem adding that warehouses would be rehabilitated to store food. "IFAD-supported projects are the main vehicles for improving the liv= es of the rural poor and effective project implementation is the foundation of enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty," said Mohamed B=E9avogui, Director of Western and Central Africa Division in IFAD.

Mr. B=E9avogui said without sound institutions, there can be no real=

representation of people and that understanding the institutional context=

was the first step towards sustainable development. This is particularly true for rural and agricultural development, wh= ere for too long development efforts have overlooked the wider context in whi= ch development is to take place, he said. To this end IFAD has adopted as a core objective the strengthening of=

the voice and choices of poor rural people through local institutional development. IFAD has 50 on-going rural development projects and programmes in Western and Central Africa, for a total commitment of US$ 1.3 billion, making the region one of the largest users of IFAD resources, the Western=

and Central Africa Division director said. Since 1980 IFAD has supported 16 programmes and projects in Ghana, w= ith total financing of $184.45 million, making it the second largest user of IFAD resources in the region.

IFAD's investments seek to enable rural poor people to improve and diversify their livelihoods in a sustainable manner. Through its operations, IFAD supports the key development objectives of Ghana's Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II).

IFAD works with poor rural people to enable them to grow and sell mo= re food, increase their incomes and determine the direction of their own liv= es. Since 1978, IFAD has invested over US$11 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering some 350 million people to break out of poverty.

IFAD is an international financial institution and a specialized UN agency based in Rome - the UN's food and agriculture hub. It is a unique partnership of 165 members from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), other developing countries and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).