World Bank funded GIRAV Project Gives Seven New Toyota Pick UP Vehicles to its Implementing Partners

The Gambia Inclusive and Resilient Agricultural Value Chain Development Project dubbed “GIRAV” is a five-year USD40 million grant from the World Bank focusing on five priority agricultural value chains namely; Rice, Maize, Horticulture (vegetables and mango), Cashew and Poultry.  

The project’s Development Objective is to promote the development of inclusive, resilient and competitive agricultural value chains, focusing on smallholder farmers and agribusinesses across The Gambia. It is being executed by MoA and implemented by the CPCU in close partnership with 18 IPs. 

In his keynote address, Minister Sabally thanked the World Bank, the main financiers of the GIRAV project, the CPCU and the project team for the gesture noting that it is a beautiful idea to support our IPs to improve performance and hence maximize their output. He said that this support alone underscores the importance the project attaches to ensuring that an efficient and effective project implementation is in place across all interventions implemented by various implementing partner institutions.  

He said: “The provision of the vehicles underscores the Ministry’s drive to support the beneficiary institutions in transforming the agriculture sector from subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture through which food and nutrition sovereign can be realized thus contribute towards achieving the sector goals and objectives as well as the new National Development plan (NDP), leaving no one behind as envisaged by President Adama Barrow.   

“These vehicles being handed over to you today will complement the support received earlier from the project as well as from other agricultural projects including ROOTS and the Small Ruminants Production Enhancement Project in the delivery of interventions in the sector. I therefore challenge you to make good use of the vehicles. Ensure timely implementation of activities and reporting”.  

He advised the head of institutions to assign the vehicles to deserving focal points and further challenged all to take great care of the vehicles to ease their current mobility constraints and strengthen their monitoring capabilities of the GIRAV project activities as well as their own institution planned activities. He said: “The take home message for you and those who could not make it here is to ensure that frequent and timely monitoring and reporting of field activities and year-round data collection across the target value chains are adhered to”.   

Hon. Sabally used the opportunity to acknowledge what he described as the “remarkable achievements” registered by the project since its inception in 2022. He said: “Under the seed programme which was implemented in 2022 and 2023 rainy seasons, a combined total of 27,354 small scale farmers of which, 15,102 thus representing 55% were women benefited from the programme. Youth reached through the seed programme for the past two rainy seasons is 5,981 accounting to 22% of the global figure.   

“Besides this support, the GIRAV project is in the process of finalizing the E-Extension platform which if completed will address the farmer-extension ratio which we are all aware that of recent, it making our extension-farmer contact difficult to achieve. GIRAV has also procured and distributed a total of 150 Tablets to capture data, process and sharing.  In terms of staff capacity building, both NARI, NSS, DLS, DoA, PPS, FSQA and The Gambia Standards Bureau has one way other benefited from local and overseas training”.  

Earlier, Mr. Mod Secka, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Agriculture also underlined the importance of the gesture. He reminded the recipients that the assistance is aimed at facilitating their movement in the implementation of their activities. 

Mr. Abdoulie Touray, Coordinator of the GIRAV Project and the CPCU also noted that the provision of the vehicles is designed to strengthen the capacity of the IPs in the implementation of both GIRAV and other activities under their purview in the quest to boost food security and nutrition, alleviate poverty and thus contribute towards the achievement of national development priorities.  Delivering the vote of thanks on behalf of the beneficiaries, Dr. Demba Jallow, Director General, NARI also thanked the Project, the Government and the World Bank for the “timely intervention”. He reaffirmed their commitment to the attainment of the project’s development objective whilst assuring that the vehicles will be properly managed and utilized.