By Juldeh Njie
Action Aid The Gambia in collaboration with its counterparts in Senegal, USA and Action Aid International Tuesday organised a three-day regional meeting on agro- ecology and resilience at the Senegambia Beach Hotel.
The meeting, according to officials, is aimed at sharing experiences on work around agro-ecology and resilience in Gambia and Senegal.
Speaking at the meeting shortly, Buba Khan, Africa advocacy, AAI said since the 2008 food crisis in the Sahel, they see the need to work together with partners and try to find a solution to some of the problems because they believe that droughts alone need not cause food crisis.
“We felt that if the necessary investments are put in place alternatives would have been found and we would be able to use the natural resources that we have at our disposals,” he said.
He continued:”After the crisis we said perhaps we need to look at the model of agriculture that we are practicing and provide an alternative because the current model is not sustainable and affordable to the small holder farmers and it is not also empowering to women small holder farmers.
“As a result we came up with agro-ecology practises like climate resilience agriculture that would promote and help give a better livelihood opportunity to women small holder farmers and to the farming community in general”.
Speaking earlier, executive director Action Aid Gambia, Omar Badji whiles welcoming and thanking his development partners for the laudable initiative, urged them to explore and meet with the people of the smiling coast.
He reminded the gathering that they need to come together and share ideas, success and challenges. “The idea of bringing people together is for us to share ideas success and challenges to enable them achieve their goal because they are not the only ones doing agro- ecology work.
“I will be encouraging active participation of everybody because agro-ecology is a very complex area so we need very strong approaches,” he said.
He expressed delight and applauded the Action Aid USA, Action Aid International and Action Aid Senegal for doing the overall coordination and collaboration and the government for providing the space.
Also speaking, Ifeoma C Monwuba, country director Action Aid Senegal, also expressed delight to partake in the project, adding that the project is very crucial because looking at the issue of disaster waste production and climate change so as to get information from the government as to what is happening to the weather. and given the impact of climate change to the development of their plan.
