SANATU ZAMBANG STUDIOS (Podcast)

Forests play a vital role in preventing global warming and building sustainable societies. So the need to protect and develop them can never be stressed enough. Japan's substantial forests make it a notable example. In brief, that is the message of the government report on forests and forestry released last week. The white paper, the first to be prepared under the Forest and Forestry Basic Law that took effect last July, points out various problems, including financial ones, that stand in the way of forest conservation. The government has its work cut out: fleshing out the basic program approved by the Cabinet last October. Forests have a variety of functions, including land conservation, securing of water sources, control of climate change, and creation of natural environs essential to human existence. The law gives new value to these "multifunctional" forests with a view to achieving harmony between them and society. There is a hard lesson to be learned ...

The Day of Arafah (Arabic: يوم عرفة) is an Islamic Holy Day, in which the verse of the Qur'an was revealed which explained that is said that the religion had been perfected. The Day falls on the 9th day of Dhul Hijja (ذو الحجة) of the lunar Islamic Calendar . This happens to be approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramadan . It is the second day of the Hajj pilgrimage and the day after is the first day of the major Islamic Holiday of Eid ul-Adha . At dawn of this day, Muslim pilgrims will make their way from Mina to a nearby hillside and plain called Mount Arafa and the Plain of Arafa. It was from this site that Muhammad SWA gave his famous Farewell Sermon in his final year of life.There are numerous virtues claimed for the 9th of Dhu ’l-Hijjah which is known as yawm al-‘Arafah. This is the day where the pilgrims assemble on the plain of ‘Arafah to complete one of the essential rituals of the Hajj. It is claimed that this is the day the religion was per...

Rice farmers in three northern regions of Ghana will now have access to additional funding, thanks to the newly launched $75 million fund secured by the SNV Netherland Development Organisation. The $75million fund which SNV acquired from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project (FinGAP) will help to boost commercial rice production locally. FinGAP is a five-year funding intervention programme set up by the USAID to facilitate support for rice, maize and soya production. It was created to address constraints that restrict the development of commercial agriculture. Since it launched, it has provided funding for 1,700 farmers and processors, with rice manufacturers the major benefactors. Northern Ghana contributes up to 80% of the Ghana food basket and for the local market, comprising of major crops like yam, cassava, maize, millet, sorghum, rice, groundnuts, beans etc, while livestock species produced cat...

Rice is one of the world's most important basic foods for about half of the world's population and provides a source of livelihood to about two billion people worldwide. Rice has become the second most important staple food after maize in the Ahafo Ano North District of Ashanti and Ghana as a whole. Its consumption therefore keeps increasing as a result of consumer habits, ceremonial events and population increase. The rice industry is one sector that has suffered the brunt of importation. The sector over the years has been made to compete with imported rice, thus pushing local rice farmers out of business. According to the National Rice Development Strategy (NRDS 2009) nearly 80% of local rice is produced under lowland conditions by small scale rice farmers in Ghana making it inadequate for the consuming public. Thus, strengthening of domestic rice production and distribution system of the cereal with market competitiveness is an urgent and critical issue...

More than 60 researchers drawn from Ghana, Burkina-Faso, Togo, Cameroon and Germany, have converged at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale for the 2014 Summer School to discuss common areas of research. During the five-day Summer School, the researchers would discuss research findings on challenges in West African Urban Agriculture, and to suggest ways of improving urban food. The focus of the summer school is on UrbanFoodplus, which is an African-German partnership, and is financed by the German Ministry for Education and Research. UrbanFoodPlus is a multi-disciplinary network of German-African and international scientists, private sector representatives and stakeholders, aimed at developing site-specific, farmer-tailored innovations for improved agricultural production, food safety and value chains. Professor Haruna Yakubu, Vice Chancellor of UDS, who opened the school in Tamale on Monday, underscored the importance of research to the soc...

Civilization began with agriculture. When our nomadic ancestors began to settle and grow their own food, human society was forever changed. Not only did villages, towns and cities begin to flourish, but so did knowledge, the arts and the technological sciences. And for most of history, society's connection to the land was intimate. Human communities, no matter how sophisticated, could not ignore the importance of agriculture. To be far from dependable sources of food was to risk malnutrition and starvation. In modern times, however, many in the urban world have forgotten this fundamental connection. Insulated by the apparent abundance of food that has come from new technologies for the growing, transportation and storage of food, humanity's fundamental dependence on agriculture is often overlooked. The upcoming World Food Summit serves as an important opportunity to reconsider the fundamental importance of agriculture - and the degree to which the global ...

A project to improve the productivity, incomes and livelihoods of about 20,000 smallholder legume farmers in Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions has been launched. The three-year project dubbed: “Enhancing Soil Health in Northern Ghana: Inoculants Production, Distribution and Utilization through Private-Public Partnership”, seeks to address low soil fertility, high cost of mineral nitrogen fertilizers, lack of production facility for rhizobium inoculants amongst others. The $999,205 project, which ends in December 2016, is being implemented by the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR –SARI) based at Nyankpala, in the Northern Region, with sponsorship from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). Under the project, scientists at CSIR-SARI would disseminate the technologies in inoculants production to smallholder farmers and other stakeholders in the legumes industry in the three r...