{"id":14862,"date":"2010-10-13T11:06:07","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sierraexpressmedia.com\/?p=14862"},"modified":"2010-10-13T11:06:07","modified_gmt":"2010-10-13T15:06:07","slug":"agriculture-ministry-to-agriculture-authority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sierraexpressmedia.net\/?p=14862","title":{"rendered":"Agriculture Ministry to \u201cAgriculture Authority\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

In order to stimulate greater efficiency, and provide better service to government and the people in a vital area in the public sector, the SLPP government of President Tejan Kabbah proposed that the then autonomous agencies of Income Tax Department and Customs and Excise Department be merged with innovative \u2018Think Tank\u2019 departments \u2013 Monitoring Research and Policy; Public Affairs and Tax Education; Policy and Legal Affairs, Internal Controls and Audits, etc. \u2013 to form the \u201cNational Revenue Authority\u201d.\u00a0 The SLPP majority in Parliament gave the executive concept legislative endorsement in the NRA Act, 2002.\u00a0 The APC government in 2007, with similar thinking, refused to revive\u00a0 a separate Ministry of Youth and Sports which existed in Kabbah\u2019s government, and has opted for the lean and fit National Youth Commission. One more government bureaucracy that should be urgently freed from its governmental chain and manacles, and its flab made into combatively tough muscles, is the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security \u2013 to be morphed into an Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security Authority<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This idea of an Agriculture, Forestry and\u00a0 Food Authority<\/em><\/strong> came into my mind after reading on October 9, 2010 in the Freedom of Information-Sierra Leone cyberspace forum (FOIC-SL) <\/strong> rapturous praise from Armhen, Netherlands-based Kailahun-born \u201cSLPP Continental Europe Party Spokesman and Strategic Political Adviser\u201d, Dr. <\/span><\/strong>Jeff MacCarthy (a.k.a. Ngor Jeff<\/span><\/strong>):<\/span> \u201cThe Minister of\u00a0Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (Dr. Joe Sam-Sesay) is one of\u00a0 the country’s best agriculture ministers ever, if\u00a0not the best minister with an outstanding performance track-record in the current APC government and APC\u00a0history<\/em>\u201d\u2026.Dr. MacCarthy wrote that Minister Sam-Sesay should have\u00a0 \u201cunfettered moral support, motivating him to continue pursuing\u2026 practical initiatives \u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Dr. MacCarthy, a specialist in development, agriculture, marketing, tourism from one of the top universities in Europe who did consultancy work in Dr. Sam-Sesay\u2019s agriculture ministry a couple of months ago, could not come up with the details I asked for to justify\u00a0 his rousing kudos for\u00a0 Minister Sam-Sesay on the FOIC-SL cyberspace forum.\u00a0 Dr.\u00a0 Sam-Sesay, on the other hand, a member of the FOIC-SL cyberspace forum, too, did post to me (even while in the Americas) a summary of his ministry\u2019s achievements between 2007 and 2008.\u00a0\u00a0 Before I quote from this document blazing with abstractions, may I stress here that the issue is \u201cFood Security\u201d, not well phrased words on paper; certainly not propaganda. The food emergency gripping our nation involves filling the hungry stomachs of our hungry majority who over the past year or so have been\u00a0 enduring the hunger pangs resulting from 50% to 100% rise in their staple food, rice.\u00a0 I had asked Minister Sam-Sesay to avail me the opportunity to \u201csee\u2026.feel\u2026.hear\u2026\u201d the dramatic progress so glowingly reported on paper by his agriculture ministry \u2013 to see the mountains of rice grains;\u00a0 and clutch plump yam tubers; to hear the farmers being ecstatic about an increase in their yields and income; to hear traders reporting the ease of getting farm produce from the farms to the urban centers over newly constructed farm-to-market roads which the documents claims are being concentrated mainly in the South-East of the country.<\/p>\n

In the FOIC-SL forum \u2013being read my highly educated Sierra Leoneans in Freetown, and the Diaspora; and \u2018trawled\u2019 by Google \u2013 Minister Sam-Sesay (who should be given the highest national award for \u201cCourage\u201d for probably being not only a member of a usually combative cyberspace forum, but,\u00a0 regularly contributing, and debating) copied four staff in his ministry to facilitate my \u2018seeing\u2019.\u00a0 The agriculture ministry bureaucrats apparently ignored his order.\u00a0 None of them even responded to the e-mail copied them.\u00a0 They have put him \u2013 and, implicitly, his boss, President Ernest Bai Koroma \u2013 to shame in the face of the world<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Dr. Jeff MacCarthy writes about what could be going on in that ministry that responded with such affront to the Minister\u2019s orders: \u201cOf course, there is an\u00a0agriculture information centre -AIC\u00a0 – in Dr. Joseph Sam-Sesay’s<\/strong> ministry headed by one Mr. Alusine O. Kamara on the 2nd floor of Yuoyi Building, with\u00a0operational\u00a0budget and official staff to run that unit. According to my knowledge of the specific ministry, and what I\u00a0can hereby confirm, is that all technical units and their responsibilities fall under the Director-General’s task\u00a0as the professional-head.\u00a0Ministers are political authorities, answerable to the President\/cabinet and the Sierra Leonean public. Civil servants in these ministries are answerable to the Public Service Commission -human resource department now headed by Mr Pessima. That structure has its binding regulations which means that ministers do\u00a0not hire or fire incompetent civil servants\/or the ones they don’t get along with\u2026..(So)\u00a0you can attest the justification of why the Honourable minister brought in Mr Serry<\/strong> to cover-up for the information dissemination\u00a0on issues relating directly to his own output,\u00a0isn’t it quite logical?….\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Serry\u201d there is the 26 year olld Samuel Serry,\u00a0 a recent mass communication graduate from FBC, University of Sierra Leone, who edits for the NEW CITIZEN newspaper in Freetown.\u00a0 The hulking Serry, a founding member of\u00a0 the same Youth Arise!!! I am \u2018The Guru\u2019 for,\u00a0 did let me have some hard copies of vital documents that would beef up any argument I want to make.\u00a0 What I have read in the documents prepared by Minister Sesay\u2019s agriculture ministry, if well communicated, and, importantly, if the words can be translated into concrete reality on the ground and on the plates of the hungry masses, could mean that the APC government of President Ernest Bai Koroma would earn the biggest landslide victory ever in a free and fair elections\u00a0 in Africa – come 2012<\/strong>.\u00a0 To get to the stage where words on paper translate into food on plates, there must be a new dynamism in the agriculture ministry.\u00a0 Normal government in Sierra Leone moves at an annoying snail-pace, with a vexing \u2018I-don\u2019t-care-it-is-not-my-papa\u2019s-business\u2019 attitude.\u00a0\u00a0 This must change.<\/p>\n

A number of countries in Africa \u2013 for example, Nigeria, Malawi, and Ghana –\u00a0 have responded to the apparent apathy, incapacity or overly bureaucratic approach of generalist\u00a0 ministries of agriculture\u00a0 towards agricultural development\u00a0 by establishing autonomous or semi-autonomous regional agricultural development authorities. It could be necessary for our parliament to fast track a law that would make managerially robust the agriculture sector of government\u00a0 – like the Smallholder Commercialization Programme (SCP); Agriculture Business Centers (ABCs); Agricultural Machinery and Equipment Hire Purchase Scheme \u2013 to give them sociological, economic, even, political meaning.\u00a0\u00a0 The significant funds that Minister Sam-Sesay have been able to attract for the agriculture sector in our country can best be utilized with a \u2018Food Authority\u2019 with a private sector emphasis to attune with the private sector urgency being injected into\u00a0 rural farmers \u2013 and banishing the current\u00a0 \u2018Food Ministry\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Fund<\/span><\/strong> approved on June 21, 2010 the APC government\u2019s request for U.S. $50 million<\/strong> in support for the Smallholder Commercialization Programme. The Islamic Development Bank,<\/span><\/strong> in collaboration with the Malaysian Government,<\/span><\/strong> on June 23, 2010 approved the sum of U.S.$15 million<\/strong> for the second phase for the expansion of the oil palm project in Mattru Jong, Bonthe District. A 16 million Euros<\/strong> project has been approved by the European Union<\/span><\/strong>.\u00a0 This will mean the expansion of\u00a0 farms for the cash crops of coffee and cocoa in the traditional growing areas of Kenema, Bo, Pujehun and Kailahun.\u00a0 As if the entire world is competing to shower money on the agriculture sector in our country, the World Food Programme (WFP) <\/span><\/strong>– whose Executive Board applauded Sierra Leone as the first country to incorporate social protection and safety net in its agriculture programme<\/em><\/strong> – has approved U.S. $80million<\/strong> for all activities along the value chain of our agricultural programme.<\/p>\n

The ambitious Minister Sesay is still being \u2018aggressive\u2019 in trying to mobilize more support to operationalize the agricultural objectives of President Ernest Bai Koroma\u2019s Agenda for Change.\u00a0 He co-authored an article in the New York-based \u2018The Guardian\u2019<\/span><\/strong> newspaper with his counterpart Rwanda minister of agriculture, Agnes Kabilata.<\/p>\n

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The article, published on September 26, 2010, among other things, made a strong case for Sierra Leonean farmers who have clearly woken up to the reality of abandoning subsistence farming practices for mechanized commercial agriculture.\u00a0 The article further reads: \u201c\u2026Africans, on whose shoulders the responsibility of transforming agriculture rightly falls, have devised a powerful initiative to support smallholder farmers using the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Process (CAADP)\u2026\u201d<\/em> The ministers reminded world leaders of their pledge to contribute a colossal $22 billion towards food security in Africa\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I doubt whether any cabinet minister in any government in Sierra Leone\u2019s\u00a0 post-independence history has ever written an article on his\/her activities and have it published in one of the leading newspapers in the world \u2013 like Minister Sesay has done.\u00a0 And, Minister Sesay has the PR savvy to fuse our post-war country\u2019s message with that of post-genocide Rwanda, an\u00a0 \u2018icon\u2019 of the international community; a country, in per capita terms, attracting the largest donor funding in African in recent years.\u00a0\u00a0 Minister Sesay, whose feet and head are well-placed in the 21st<\/sup> Century \u2013 he comes up with quick responses on the FOIC-SL cybespace forum; not, probably, like his other minister colleagues who mostly would never punch a keyboard; and would take a whole day drafting a single letter for their secretaries to type \u2013 should be not fettered to agriculture ministry bureaucrats whose mindsets and attitudes are still imprisoned in the 20th<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Jeff MaCarthy, well positioned in a university Think Tank in one of the richest countries in the world, Netherlands,\u00a0 is full of contempt for such bureaucrats, and their political overlords: \u201cThe BIGGEST<\/strong> problem in Sierra Leone today is\u00a0that most of the politicians are Masterpiece<\/strong> liars \u2026.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I still have to examine the \u2018Truth\u2019 in the documents on the agriculture ministry of Minister Sesay through seeing, and feeling.\u00a0 As far as \u2018food\u2019 is concerned, \u2018Truth\u2019 is not a philosophically contentious matter.\u00a0 A hungry man knows when he is hungry.\u00a0 A blind man knows when he is eating food. A child knows when his stomach is filled with food, and cannot enjoy platitudes when hunger gnaws his stomach.\u00a0 Spin doctors can never convince a hungry man that his stomach is full.\u00a0 A nation that politicizes the food business is suicidal. That is why there is a\u00a0 burning need to harness the powers of \u2018Truth-Speaking\u2019 intellectuals like the SLPP chieftain in Europe, Dr. Jeff. MacCarthy \u2013 and many other such \u2018food experts\u2019 from Europe to China, Vietnam to Argentina – to accelerate Minister Sam-Sesay\u2019s plans becoming food on the plate we have to accelerate morphing our \u2018Food Ministry\u2019 into a \u2018Food Authority\u2019.<\/p>\n

Oswald Hanciles, Freetown<\/em><\/p>\n

Stay with Sierra Express Media, for your trusted place in news!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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