Makossa Banana from Cameroon

Yaounde, Cameroon Africa(Cameroon News) – Cameroon is planning synergize with FAO to get high grade seedlings in order to ramp up agricultural productivity.

The government of Cameroon in planning to synergize with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and are closing down on research to set up a feasible seed system that can satisfy the objectives of public authorities to ramp up agricultural production so as to guarantee food sufficiency in the country.

This would be facilitated through a Support Project for Capacity Building on the Control and Certification of Seedlings (TCP/CMR/3203 (D). Members of the project conducted their final workshop at the Yaounde Djeuga hotel last Friday May 27 to arrive at the final roadmap for the project.

In a speech, FAO’s country Resident Representative, Ousmane Guindo, said the project has been arranged at the request of government to bring up food sufficiency by improving agricultural production.

He revealed that during the past couple of years, FAO had aided the government in setting up the system in terms of institutional capacity ramp up. “For example, we procured equipment worth over FCFA 63 million for the national and regional laboratories.

We also built the capacities of technicians nationwide so that Cameroon can have a system that will be credible in terms of quality of seeds of the various crops produced in the country”, he said.

Speaking on behalf of the Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Secretary General of the ministry, Jean-Claude Eko’o Akouafane, called the programme as a measure taken right on time.

The programme has been deployed during a time when the government was trying their very best to ramp up agricultural production so as to place a tab on unnecessary import of food crops, the S.G said, “good quality seedlings constitute viable agricultural input and the programme cannot but be welcomed”.