The Northern Regional Minister, Mr Salifu Sa-eed, had said that there is the need to improve the productivity of shea agro-forest parklands.
This he said will boost jobs and economic opportunities for women and youth.
According to him, it will also promote food security and contribute to meeting national and regional climate mitigation and forest landscape restoration pledges.
He said government is fully aware of the huge potentials of agriculture in turning the country’s economy around, but it also constitutes a reliable source of enhanced growth when tapped judiciously and properly to rake in the needed dividends.
According to the minister, government through the ministry of food and agriculture, has initiated policies with the view to modernizing agriculture to ensure food security but also to engender a positive transformation of the economy, planting for food and jobs, enhancing access to credit and inputs for agriculture, irrigation development, value chain development and increased access to extension services.
The total effect of all these, he indicated, is expected to transform the agricultural sector to meet the expectation of the 21st century.
The minister was speaking at a two-day World Bank regional dissemination workshop for researchers and stakeholders from Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali.
Mr Sa-eed indicated that the Savanna-Sahelian economies and livelihoods depend heavily on soil, water, vegetation and natural resource assets.
These resources, he noted, have been steadily deteriorating as a result of expanding human settlement and increasing demand for food, fodder, fuel-wood, land and water.
Ghana has since been involved in Sustainable Land and Water Management initiatives since 2010.
Currently with the support of GEF, Ghana is focusing on enhancing resilience and food security by increasing the diversity of smallholder farming systems, creating more Community Resources Management Areas (CREMA), promoting equity and the inclusion of vulnerable and marginal groups, enhancing local institutions in the three regions of northern Ghana.
Government of Ghana, he said, sees sustainable and resilient landscapes as critical to minimize trade-offs between sectors, reduce migration and conflicts, enhance the resilience of livelihoods, and implement the Sustainable Development Goals.
The minister therefore called for a conceptualized collaboration that can advance sustainable land and water management.
He said the regional coordinating council which he heads will collaborate with traditional authorities to protect shea trees in the region.
The council, Mr Sa-eed added, will encourage metropolitan, municipality and district assemblies to enact bylaws to protect the Shea tree.
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