His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio has engaged development partners and stakeholders in the agricultural sector, where he said with his government’s focus on human capital development to drive sustainable growth in the country, “we are prioritising investment in agriculture through the Feed Salone Programme.”
President Bio tweeted: “Today, I addressed key agriculture sector stakeholders at the FEED SALONE Roundtable event, organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, to outline my vision for agricultural productivity in Sierra Leone and seek partnership and collaboration for the effective conceptualisation and implementation of the FEED SALONE Strategy.
“Agriculture is the mainstay of our economy, and my Government aims to build a resilient economy from the ground up, with agriculture as the core engine of growth. Therefore, we must till our arable land that is blessed with abundant water resources and ample sunshine for economic prosperity.
“In the next 5-years, through the FEED SALONE Programme, we aim to accelerate investments in the agriculture sector to ignite agricultural productivity, safeguard foodsecurity, and foster inclusive economicgrowth, laying the foundation for sustained prosperity. My Government seeks effective collaboration and partnership from key stakeholders, including the private sector, farmers, development partners, CSOs, NGOs, academia, research institutions, and donor agencies to achieve the overarching vision of the FEED SALONE Programme – FOOD SECURITY and SOVEREIGNTY.
“The FIVE Goals of the FEED SALONE Programme are to: Reduce importation of our key staple food; Boost export earnings from our cash crops; Create jobs and rejuvenate the rural areas using agriculture as the driver of new growth, jobs and wealth creation; Reduce hunger and malnutrition; and Build resilience to economic shocks. I, therefore, charged the key stakeholders to rethink strategies and retool their efforts towards achieving this all-important vision of building a food-secure Sierra Leone through innovative and out-of-the-box interventions. Together, We Will FEED SALONE!”
In his keynote address to the Feed Salone Roundtable Agenda event organised by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security that “the Feed Salone programme will receive up to 10 percent of our national budgetary allocation over the next five years. The programme will ignite agricultural productivity, safeguard food security and foster inclusive economic growth, laying the foundation for sustainable prosperity”.
President Bio told the stakeholders, drawn from civil society organisations, development partners, the private sector, and farmers, that there was no reason for Sierra Leone to be a net food importer, considering how richly blessed the country was with abundant land and water resources, ample sunshine and an accessible labour force.
“We enacted sound public policies to stimulate sound private sector investments. The government primarily focused on de-risking the investment space while supporting the enabling environment for private sector players to participate.
“To this end, my government created a $10 million United States facility to stimulate private sector participation in importing and distributing fertiliser, seed production, and other agrochemicals. We must now turn our rural areas from economic misery to economic prosperity zones. This requires a total transformation of the agriculture sector,” the President appealed.
He emphasised that, at the core of Feed Salone, rapid agricultural industrialisation must focus not only on primary production but also on developing agricultural value chains adding that the Feed Salone Programme encapsulated a government vision for sustainable agricultural transformation that would build on gains and scale-up interventions to foster food security and sovereignty in Sierra Leone.
“I will also establish a Presidential Council on Agriculture that I will chair. The Presidential Council will constitute Ministries, Departments, Agencies, MDAs, the private sector, farmers, academia, research institutions, and civil society to oversee the successful implementation of the Feed Salone Programme,” the President assured.
The Feed Salone initiative has five specific goals: reducing importation of key staple foods (rice, onions, and poultry production), boosting export earnings from the country’s cash crops, creating jobs, rejuvenating rural areas using agriculture as the driver of new growth, reducing hunger and malnutrition, and building resilience to economic shocks.
United Nations Resident Coordinator, Babatunde Ahonsi, while contributing to the theme “Partnership for the Delivery of the Feed Salone Agenda,” emphasised the relationship between food security and sustainable development, pointing out that progress toward food security would definitely deliver progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.
“On behalf of the international development partners and the United Nations Foundation, we are pleased to commend His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio and his government for facing agriculture and food security, climate change, and innovation as national priorities under the Feed Salone initiative as one of the five big game changers for accelerating economic growth and building resilience in the nation.”
“The Feed Salone Strategy is entirely an ambitious initiative, especially in the context of significant resource constraints and the generally unstable global environment. It will therefore need to galvanise as many partnerships as possible to ensure its effective implementation in the areas of optimisation of resources, delivery capacity, technical expertise within and beyond the country, networking, government, and society,” he urged.
Dr. Ahonsi also confirmed that “the United Nations system in Sierra Leone, in collaboration with other development partners, stands ready to support the fine-turning, finalisation, and better implementation of the Feed Salone programme with the requisite capacities, technical assistance, and resource partnerships”.
