Dr Aboubacar Senghore said The Gambia is a fertile ground for agriculture investment. He made these remarks on Tuesday May 12 at the opening ceremony of the Africa Centre of Excellence Project (ACE) three-day forum underway in The Gambia. The event brought together regional experts and senior government officials for the West Africa sub-region.
He said: “In the area of agriculture, it is important to note that the government of the Gambia places a high premium on agriculture and undesirably a large number of the rural populations are involved in subsistence agriculture.
“With the advent of my government’s food self-sufficiency agenda Vision 2016, intervention in the area is quite timely given the Gambia’s endowment in natural resources, such as arable land mass for crop cultivation, River Gambia for irrigation of rice and other crops and a youthful population.
“The Gambia is a fertile ground for any type of agricultural investment. Our goal is to attain food security and self-sufficiency within a short period of time.”
Minister Senghore continued: “As Africans, we must believe that the potential for greatness and for excellence has no racial or geographic boundaries. Cognizant of this, coupled with African states desire to move from a low income economy status to a middle-level or developed country using higher education as a catalyst for sustainable socio economic development, this is World Bank funded project could not have come at a better time.”
The higher education however pointed out that the Gambia is grappling with challenges of developing our human capital stock, particularly in the critical sectors of education, health and agriculture. He added that the country needs to improve capacities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in order to ensure sustainable socio-economic growth and development.”
He said: “The short and long term training packages in relevant areas such as soil, water and crop management, agribusiness management and research on improved crop varieties will yield the dividends. Training in these areas under the auspices of the ACE Project will have positive impact in our vision 2016 food self sufficiency agenda.”
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