RVCTP Hands Over 60 Tablets To Dept. of Planning Services

The RVCTP is a 7 million USD project jointly funded by the AfDB and the Government of the Gambia. The project is a 5-year project launched in 2019 and is expected to phase out in 2024.

The RVCTP seeks to increase rice production and commercialization in the country, by using a value chain approach within the three agricultural regions of CRR North and South, and URR which are the major rice-growing regions of the Gambia.

Sang Mendy, Project Director, RVCTP said that the African Emergency Food Production Facility (AEFPF) is the Africa Development Bank’s newly approved rapid response framework to address the food crises and disruption of the supply of critical inputs for food production arising from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“Part of it is to purchase fertilizer and subsidize the fertilizer in doing that to make sure that there is no leakage in the distribution of the fertilizer as we are going digital by registering all the farmers that are going to benefit from the smart subsidy which is why we purchased about 60 tablets to donate to the Department of Planning to collect data to register each farmer countrywide,” he stated.

Hassan Jallow, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture stated that the provision of these tablets is expected to enhance timely, relevant, and reliable data collection for planning and decision-making within and outside the project activities as well as strengthen the Department Services of the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The handing over resulted from the approval by the Africa Development Bank of the African Emergency Food Production Facility (AEFPF), which is an additional financing under the RVCTP at the tune of USD 3.5 Million,” he explained.

According to the Permanent Secretary, having been aware of the existence of this facility, the Government of the Gambia requested additional financing under the AEFPF to mitigate the effects of the external shocks and enable the Government to meet the country’s food production for 2022 and 2023 seasons.

He unveiled that the additional financing which was launched last year on the 23^rd of September, 2022 by the Minister of Agriculture Dr. Demba Sabally, will no doubt go a long way to increase food production and input supply to avert food crises and build resilience in food systems in the short to medium term for future shocks.

Abdoulie Touray, Coordinator of the Central Project Coordination Unit, said that this handing over of the tablets to the Department of Information Services is to enhance their data collection, especially the statistics unit. Adding that it has come at a better time in preparation for the dry season rice production and as well the rainy season production.

He challenged the Department of Planning Services to properly maintain the tablets so that they serve their intended purpose effectively.

Francis Mendy, Director Department of Planning Services, MoA, assured that these materials will be put to judicious use while stating that “the Department of Planning Services has been battling over the years in terms of data collection due to inadequate equipment such as tablets or mobile phones since we have graduated from a database data collection exercise to electronic,”.

He added, “We have also been partnering with data collection providers such as the Gambia Bureau of Statistics who have been supporting us through collaboration to do the data collection process,”

Mr. Mendy concluded by stating that the sixty tablets would go a long way in helping to reduce the stress their officers have been facing in terms of data collection while adding that the gesture is huge and they continue to seek more support in the areas of field visits, fuel for the data collection and so on.