03 February 2010 - Plan Ireland, has been awarded European Union Food Facility grants for two innovative development projects in West Africa.

The grants, which are to be implemented over the next 20 months, will be used to fund community economic security and empowerment initiatives in Ghana and Guinea.

The largest of these programmes will take place in Ghana where Plan will work with local communities to encourage the cultivation of soya beans. Soya is generally regarded as something of a super crop in that it is easy to grow, very versatile in its uses, and adds to rather than takes from the fertility of the soil.

The project will take place in North Western Ghana which is one of the poorest parts of the country and whole communities will benefit from increased incomes and a better standard of living.

A vital aspect of the project will be to establish savings and loan schemes at village level whereby villagers can pay into a scheme and, when they need cash for seeds or processing equipment, they can have access to a loan facility.

It is expected that 10,000 households, some 70,000 people, will benefit from this scheme and that increasing family prosperity and economic security will improve the lives of children considerably through better nutrition levels, better living conditions and better access to education.

The other Plan Ireland project being assisted by the European Union Food Facility is a project which will help fishing communities in Guinea. This project will help very poor fishermen to become more efficient and, again with the establishment of savings and loan schemes, to purchase modern boats and safety equipment.

The scheme will also encourage and assist local communities to establish on-shore fish farms and, when production rises to the levels where it becomes viable, to establish fish processing plants that will boost incomes in the impoverished communities.

One particularly innovative idea is to combine rice cultivation and fish farming in the same waters.  A symbiotic relationship is established whereby the fish eat pests that could affect the rice and the water is enriched by the droppings of the fish.

Plan Ireland’s programme representatives have just returned from Ghana where they have been working with their colleagues in-country, local partners, beneficiaries and government representatives in getting the project off the ground.

Expressing his delight with the new projects, Plan Ireland CEO, David Dalton, said that it was the culmination of several month’s work and a very exciting development for some of the poorest communities in West Africa.